Overview

Lua

Stacks2.4K

Followers1.0K

Votes180

GitHub Stars1.5K

Forks452

React Native

Stacks34.3K

Followers29.5K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars124.4K

Forks24.9K

Lua vs React Native: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Lua and React Native. Lua is a lightweight scripting language commonly used in game development, while React Native is a JavaScript framework for building mobile applications.

File Types: One major difference between Lua and React Native is the file types used. Lua primarily uses .lua files for its scripts and code, whereas React Native uses JavaScript files (.js) for implementing logic and components.
Platform Support: Another significant difference lies in the platform support offered by these technologies. Lua is a versatile language that can run on various platforms, including desktop, web, and mobile. On the other hand, React Native is primarily designed for mobile app development, offering support for iOS and Android platforms.
Language Paradigm: Lua is a multi-paradigm language, supporting both procedural and object-oriented programming styles. It provides flexibility to developers in choosing the approach that best fits their needs. React Native, on the other hand, is a declarative UI framework that follows functional programming concepts. It focuses on creating reusable components and utilizing a unidirectional data flow.
Community and Ecosystem: Lua has been around for several years and has a dedicated community of users. However, its ecosystem may not be as extensive as that of React Native, which benefits from the wider JavaScript community support. React Native has a vast ecosystem of libraries, frameworks, and tools developed by the community that can be leveraged to enhance app development.
Performance and Speed: Lua is known for its lightweight nature and efficiency, making it fast and suitable for performance-critical applications. React Native, on the other hand, allows for faster development by leveraging JavaScript's capabilities but may suffer in terms of performance when compared to native mobile development.
Learning Curve: When it comes to the learning curve, Lua is relatively straightforward and easy to grasp, making it a good choice for beginners and those with limited programming experience. React Native, however, requires familiarity with JavaScript and its ecosystem. While it provides a more extensive set of tools and libraries, mastering React Native can be more challenging, especially for newcomers.

In summary, Lua and React Native differ in terms of file types, platform support, language paradigms, community and ecosystem, performance and speed, and learning curves. Understand these differences to choose the technology that best aligns with your project requirements and skill set.

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Advice on Lua, React Native

Nick

CTO at Pickio

Jun 2, 2020

Decided

We built the first version of our app with RN and it turned out a mess in a while. A lot of bugs along with poor performance out of the box for a fairly large app. Many things, that native platform has, cannot be done with existing solutions for RN. For instance, large titles on iOS are not fully implemented in any of existing navigations libraries. Also there's painfully slow JSON bridge and many other small, yet annoying things. On the other hand Flutter became a really powerful and easy-to-use tool. A bit of a learning curve, of course, because of Dart, but it worth learning. Flutter offers TONS of built-in features, no JSON-bridge, AOT compilation for iOS.

490k views490k

Comments

Andrea

May 26, 2020

Needs adviceon

Vue.js

Vue Native

React

I'm a huge fan of Vue.js and I'm pretty comfortable with it. I need to build a mobile app for my company and I was now wondering whether I could make use of VueJS with Vue Native instead of switching to React. I know Vue Native builds on top of RN. My question is whether I'd have as much freedom with Vue Native over RN and whether you feel like Vue Native is "production ready" or not. Not sure of which shortcomings I may find using Vue Native... Thanks a lot!!!

336k views336k

Comments

Gamerians

May 21, 2020

Needs adviceon

Lua

Python

Java

I am trying to make Roblox game which requires Lua. I quite don't want to go with Lua just because other tools just might let me do more projects later on. I heard that Python is most similar to Lua, but I am still not sure which tool to use. Java, I think it will help me with many stuff later on for websites, projects, and more!

470k views470k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Lua	React Native
Lua combines simple procedural syntax with powerful data description constructs based on associative arrays and extensible semantics. Lua is dynamically typed, runs by interpreting bytecode for a register-based virtual machine, and has automatic memory management with incremental garbage collection, making it ideal for configuration, scripting, and rapid prototyping.	React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.
-	Native iOS Components;Asynchronous Execution;Touch Handling;Flexbox and Styling; Polyfills
Statistics
GitHub Stars 1.5K	GitHub Stars 124.4K
GitHub Forks 452	GitHub Forks 24.9K
Stacks 2.4K	Stacks 34.3K
Followers 1.0K	Followers 29.5K
Votes 180	Votes 1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros 41 Fast learning curve 26 Very easy to embed in C programs 26 Efficient memory usage 20 Open source 19 Good for game scripting Cons 4 Nooby 2 Not widespread 1 D 0 Python	Pros 214 Learn once write everywhere 174 Cross platform 169 Javascript 122 Native ios components 69 Built by facebook Cons 23 Javascript 19 Built by facebook 12 Cant use CSS 4 30 FPS Limit 2 Slow

What are some alternatives to Lua, React Native?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.