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Meteor vs React Native: What are the differences?
Introduction
In this article, we will compare Meteor and React Native, two popular frameworks for building web and mobile applications.
Scalability: One key difference between Meteor and React Native is their scalability. Meteor is designed to be a full-stack framework, providing a cohesive solution for both the front-end and back-end of an application. It uses a real-time data synchronization feature called "reactive programming" which allows for efficient real-time updates. On the other hand, React Native focuses solely on the front-end development of mobile applications. It enables developers to build native mobile apps using JavaScript, but it relies on external APIs for server-side functionality. Therefore, Meteor offers a more comprehensive solution when it comes to scalability.
Platform-specificity: Meteor is designed to work on both web and mobile platforms, while React Native is specifically focused on mobile app development. React Native allows developers to write code once and deploy it on both iOS and Android platforms, leveraging platform-specific components for a native look and feel. Meteor, on the other hand, uses a single codebase to build applications for web, iOS, and Android platforms, ensuring consistent functionality across different devices. This platform-specificity is a significant difference between the two frameworks.
Learning Curve: In terms of the learning curve, React Native may have a steeper initial learning curve compared to Meteor. React Native requires developers to have a solid understanding of JavaScript and React concepts. However, once the basics are mastered, developers can leverage their existing React knowledge to build native mobile applications. Meteor, on the other hand, has a relatively shallower learning curve since it imposes fewer requirements on the developer's knowledge base. With its intuitive API and built-in features, Meteor simplifies many aspects of web and mobile app development.
Community and Ecosystem: Both Meteor and React Native have active and supportive communities, but they differ in terms of their focus and ecosystem. React Native, being primarily focused on mobile app development, has a larger community surrounding mobile app development. It benefits from a vast ecosystem of libraries, components, and tools specifically targeted for mobile app development. Meteor, on the other hand, has a strong community focused on web and mobile app development. It offers a rich ecosystem of packages and libraries that cater to different web and mobile application requirements.
Performance: While both Meteor and React Native offer good performance, there are some differences. Meteor's reactivity feature allows for effortless real-time updates, making it an excellent choice for applications that require real-time data synchronization. On the other hand, React Native leverages platform-specific components and native rendering, resulting in better performance compared to hybrid frameworks like Cordova/PhoneGap. React Native also benefits from the performance optimizations provided by JavaScript engines like JavaScriptCore or V8.
Development Speed: Meteor and React Native offer different development speeds based on the project requirements. Meteor's full-stack nature and built-in features facilitate rapid development as it provides all the necessary tools and functionalities out of the box. Developers can quickly prototype and develop web and mobile apps using the same codebase. React Native, although requiring additional setup for server-side APIs, offers faster development for mobile apps. Its hot reloading and modular structure help developers iterate quickly, enhancing productivity during the development process.
In summary, Meteor and React Native differ in terms of scalability, platform-specificity, learning curve, community and ecosystem, performance, and development speed. Meteor is a comprehensive full-stack framework suitable for scalable web and mobile applications, while React Native is focused on providing a native mobile app development experience for both iOS and Android platforms.
Hi Friends, I am new to #MobileAppDevelopment and I need to make a #CrossPlatformMobileApp. I want guidance regarding which tools should I use to build a mobile app. Main requirements: integrate Unity game engine and provide a platform for social chats.
Past experience - C++ and Python
I have tagged Flutter and React Native but if anything better than both please suggest them.
Hey, If you are using Unity you are going to have to do the end to end development on Unity, you can directly build for android and iOS on Unity. I dont see how Flutter or React Native fit into this equation. Unity is a standalone engine. As for Social Chats, you could use Firebase or your own API and integrate that in Unity in C#
I agree with Sahil. If Unity is a requirement, best way is to use just that to create your app.
If you really want, it should be possible to use Flutter and Unity together. Using Flutter Unity Widget. Although I wouldn't recommend it just yet. It's too early days.
If you do end up using it, I would be very interested in reading about your experiences.
You can start by small steps with Flutter and after Unity. Flutter = best choice to build a small cross-platform mobile app. With or no flutter, use directly Unity. Y'll have complete control but it's harder for new mobile developers. Keep in mind, the requirement is Unity!
Hello guys, I am new here. So, if I posted without specific guidelines, please ignore.
Basically, I am an iOS developer and developing native apps for the last three years. Recently, I started learning React Native to develop apps for both platforms. If anyone out there knows any useful resources that will become a better react native developer.
#newbie
Well, the first resource I would recommend you is my upcoming book by Packt Publishing, "Professional React Native", but it's due late January next year :) . Now jokes aside (the book's real by the way :) ), the easiest way to build a iOS/Android/Web app with React Native is to do: npm install -g expo-cli expo init some-project cd some-project expo eject
You might have heard of Expo, but trust me, stay away from it. Expo highest value is that it's an already pre-configured 3 platforms environment, but if you don't eject then you're vendor-locked to what Expo has to offer in iOS and Android, which is very poor compared to going full React Native on these platforms, they can't even handle Google Sign In properly and by the way, even if your app is 10 lines of code your app size will be over 40 MB if you don't eject, yep it's that bad, plus the performance is regular and the loading times slow, not to mention that you're stuck with their build service which the free tier makes you wait for hours for a free build slot. It's important to note that when ejecting you don't lose the Web, you simply do expo start --web to start your dev environment and expo build:web to build a static website that you can serve with any web server. Regarding state management, don't bother with "lifting state up" philosophies mixed with Context API to manage your state, lifting state is a great pattern and helps your codebase, Context is great to avoid prop-drilling, but NEVER mix them to achieve app-wide state management, for that, simply go for Redux or MobX, the hype is all about Redux, but I consider MobX far better in many aspects. However, as you're getting new into this I would recommend you start with Redux AND PLEASE grab yourself npm install @manaflair/redux-batch so that you can batch updates and don't bring your app to a crawl. Forget that "connect HOC" thing with React-Redux, don't bother for a second with it, go with Hooks and useSelector and useDispatch and the likes, it will make your code SO much cleaner and smaller. Adopt clean and new Hooks philosophy, avoid writing class components as much as possible and write function components augmented with Hooks.
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!!!
Vue Native is definitely production-ready in my experience. I've used both, have apps built with both in production right now, and both are fine technologies. As far as I can recall, there's nothing in RN that you can't do in VN. Given that, I would say go with "the devil you know".
That said, the one downside of VN over RN is that there are a lot more people using RN last I checked, so there are likely more resources readily available.
Hi, I'm a web dev and am using Electron for a desktop app. Now I have to develop a mobile app with the following features:
- Posting/uploading files by users, private messaging between users, download files, moderation of the uploads, push notification of new posts.
- Mods can ban users and delete files.
- Share buttons from the library folder of the user phone.
- When a user uploads a photo, a pencil tool for deleting staff on the pic.
Which tool is better for such a project?
Thanks in advance
Given your experience in electron I think the shortest hop is going to be React Native. Especially since half of the requirements are server-side. Google is doing a pretty great job bringing up Flutter and the tooling is pretty great. For me however, dart seemed like quicksand and not everything is in its final home. React Native is mature, and considering my cursory analysis of your experience and the low complexity of this project, you've got quite a lot of room to grow into Javascript Land. Ultimately, my recommendation is always "play with both, see what you like, and get to know the documentation and the community." Keep your head on a swivel and set aside time to peek greener pastures, but spend most of your time delving deeply into what you're already doing.
But yeah, go with React Native first, get bored of it, learn what the shortcomings are through experience and then see if something else is really more attractive or just a new shiny.
Well, I will personally recommend to go for React Native as I have worked in both of them. React native has big community and it is easy to opt as compared to Flutter. There no doubt about the fact that Flutter is a great framework for developing both Android/IOS apps. However, you should have some experience to go for the same. Both will require prior knowledge as for React Native you have to go through Javascript first with which you are already familiar and for Flutter you need to go through Dart. So being familiar with Javascript you should go for React Native. You can go expo which has lot of inbuilt functionalities for the React Native developers.
Hi, we are an early startup (with an iPOC prototype) but need to get started on our MVP, and our tech developers in India recommended a hybrid, and they use Ionic, then we spoke with a software company in the US and he recommended Flutter or React Native. Any advice or input for us on the differences between these? Our app will need Bluetooth GPS for "near me" and social media sharing reviews capability, and also link on the backend with businesses. Thanks in advance for any help you can give!
Maturity, Community, Facility, Libs React Native is the principal platform of mobile cross-platform development today, Flutter is it's a promise.
I would never recommend you to go with Ionic, Because of the User experience it provides is subpar. Flutter is most promising, Can be easily used to develop great user experience in no time. React native is also good, but it's phasing out in my opinion, while Ionic has already phased out. Flutter also provides great developer experience, resulting in fast and productive developers. I would have to press hard to think of a CON about flutter when recommending it for your needs.
It depends also on your team skills. Flutter is fast to learn, fast to develop with and the performance is much better in comparison to React. If your team is already highly skilled in React Native it could be the better option - if not Flutter is my 100% recommendation. We rapidly prototype and deliver MVPs with Flutter since two years.
Flutter is built on DART which is written in GO. GO compiles to binary. Hence is faster than any java based framework. It provides superior performance and has a simplified UI process for designing apps.
I don‘t have practical experience with flutter but between ionic and react native I‘d say both a perfectly viable options and we have used both for a number of production apps. We normally go with ionic on capacitor because we build a lot of pwa/web apps so we can use the same code for all. We don‘t use much of ionic elements, we do most styles on our own.
The comments that the user experience is bad I cannot agree with. A well designed and developed ionic apo can hardly be distinguished from a native app. But obviously that depends also on the usecase and type of app.
I hope this helps
Even if React Native is older (I didn't say mature) you should go for Flutter, It's works really well and the developer experience is great (auto-completion, plugin etc). I spent years with React Native and now I am using Flutter and I don't regret It. Even if you have to learn a new language, It's pretty simple even more If you know some OOP, Java and Javascript ES6 syntax in some case. One other advantage is the facility to design app in Flutter, you have widgets for everything and you can adapt any design made by your designer. For example you can't make a simple custom box shadow with React-Native ...
Next.js is probably the most enjoyable React framework our team could have picked. The development is an extremely smooth process, the file structure is beautiful and organized, and the speed is no joke. Our work with Next.js comes out much faster than if it was built on pure React or frameworks alike. We were previously developing all of our projects in Meteor before making the switch. We left Meteor due to the slow compiler and website speed. We deploy all of our Next.js projects on Vercel.
- Javascripts is the most populated language in the world.
- Easy to learn & deployed production
- Fast development
- Strong community
- Completed Documents
- Native performance with lower RAM used.
- Easy to handle native issues by using native code like Java / Objective C
- Powered by Facebook.
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.
This basically came down to two things: performance on compute-heavy tasks and a need for good tooling. We used to have a Meteor based Node.js application which worked great for RAD and getting a working prototype in a short time, but we felt pains trying to scale it, especially when doing anything involving crunching data, which Node sucks at. We also had bad experience with tooling support for doing large scale refactorings in Javascript compared to the best-in-class tools available for Java (IntelliJ). Given the heavy domain and very involved logic we wanted good tooling support to be able to do great refactorings that are just not possible in Javascript. Java is an old warhorse, but it performs fantastically and we have not regretted going down this route, avoiding "enterprise" smells and going as lightweight as we can, using Jdbi instead of Persistence API, a homegrown Actor Model library for massive concurrency, etc ...
I've done some Hybrid Mobile apps with both technologies Apache Cordova
and React Native
and described my experience in my blog.
In a few words, I would suggest to use each technology in accordance what what is your current code base and what do you want to achieve.
React Native is a great option if you need that extra edge in performance with multi-threading and native UI rendering. Or you already have a web app based on React which you want to port to mobile.
On the other hand, if you have an existing web application code and you want to reuse some or all, including the ability to use web third-party libraries, then Cordova is the best option.
Pros of Meteor
- Real-time251
- Full stack, one language200
- Best app dev platform available today183
- Data synchronization155
- Javascript152
- Focus on your product not the plumbing118
- Hot code pushes107
- Open source106
- Live page updates102
- Latency compensation92
- Ultra-simple development environment39
- Smart Packages29
- Real time awesome29
- Great for beginners23
- Direct Cordova integration22
- Better than Rails16
- Less moving parts15
- It's just amazing13
- Blaze10
- Great community support8
- Plugins for everything8
- One command spits out android and ios ready apps.6
- It just works5
- 0 to Production in no time5
- Coding Speed4
- Easy deployment4
- Is Agile in development hybrid(mobile/web)4
- You can grok it in a day. No ng nonsense4
- Easy yet powerful2
- AngularJS Integration2
- One Code => 3 Platforms: Web, Android and IOS2
- Community2
- Easy Setup1
- Free1
- Nosql1
- Hookie friendly1
- High quality, very few bugs1
- Stack available on Codeanywhere1
- Real time1
- Friendly to use1
Pros of React Native
- Learn once write everywhere214
- Cross platform174
- Javascript169
- Native ios components122
- Built by facebook69
- Easy to learn66
- Bridges me into ios development46
- It's just react40
- No compile39
- Declarative36
- Fast22
- Virtual Dom13
- Insanely fast develop / test cycle12
- Livereload12
- Great community11
- It is free and open source9
- Native android components9
- Easy setup9
- Backed by Facebook9
- Highly customizable7
- Scalable7
- Awesome6
- Everything component6
- Great errors6
- Win win solution of hybrid app6
- Not dependent on anything such as Angular5
- Simple5
- Awesome, easy starting from scratch4
- OTA update4
- As good as Native without any performance concerns3
- Easy to use3
- Many salary2
- Can be incrementally added to existing native apps2
- Hot reload2
- Over the air update (Flutter lacks)2
- 'It's just react'2
- Web development meets Mobile development2
- Ngon1
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Cons of Meteor
- Does not scale well5
- Hard to debug issues on the server-side4
- Heavily CPU bound4
Cons of React Native
- Javascript23
- Built by facebook19
- Cant use CSS12
- 30 FPS Limit4
- Slow2
- Generate large apk even for a simple app2
- Some compenents not truly native2