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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Templating Languages & Extensions
  4. CSS Pre Processors Extensions
  5. React Native vs Stylus

React Native vs Stylus

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Stylus
Stylus
Stacks447
Followers411
Votes331
GitHub Stars11.3K
Forks1.1K
React Native
React Native
Stacks34.4K
Followers29.5K
Votes1.2K
GitHub Stars124.4K
Forks24.9K

React Native vs Stylus: What are the differences?

## Introduction
React Native and Stylus are two popular tools in web development, each serving different purposes and offering unique features. Understanding the key differences between the two can help developers make informed decisions when choosing the right technology for their projects.

1. **Language Used**: React Native is a framework that uses JavaScript to build mobile applications, while Stylus is a preprocessor language that compiles down to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). React Native focuses on creating user interfaces for mobile platforms, while Stylus enhances the styling capabilities of CSS for web development.

2. **Platform Compatibility**: React Native is designed to develop applications for both iOS and Android platforms, enabling developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms. On the other hand, Stylus is primarily used for enhancing the styling of websites and does not have cross-platform capabilities like React Native.

3. **Functionality**: React Native allows developers to create native mobile applications with access to device features such as camera, GPS, and push notifications. Stylus, on the other hand, focuses on improving the efficiency and readability of CSS code by providing features like variables, mixins, and nesting.

4. **Development Process**: React Native provides a faster development cycle as changes can be hot-reloaded instantly on the emulator or device, allowing developers to preview modifications in real-time. In contrast, Stylus requires compilation before changes can be viewed, which may slow down the development process.

5. **Community Support**: React Native has a large and active community of developers who contribute to the ecosystem by creating libraries, tools, and resources for building mobile applications. Stylus also has a supportive community but is more niche compared to React Native, with a focus on improving CSS authoring.

6. **Learning Curve**: React Native requires knowledge of JavaScript and React concepts to build mobile applications, making it ideal for web developers with experience in these technologies. Stylus, on the other hand, is easier to learn for developers familiar with CSS, as it offers a simpler syntax and additional features that enhance CSS capabilities.

In Summary, understanding the key differences between React Native and Stylus can help developers choose the appropriate technology for their specific web development needs.

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Advice on Stylus, React Native

Nick
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.

491k views491k
Comments
Andrea
Andrea

May 26, 2020

Needs adviceonVue.jsVue.jsVue NativeVue NativeReactReact

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
Furqan
Furqan

Jul 16, 2020

Needs adviceonReact NativeReact Native

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}|topic:null|

325k views325k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Stylus
Stylus
React Native
React Native

Stylus is a revolutionary new language, providing an efficient, dynamic, and expressive way to generate CSS. Supporting both an indented syntax and regular CSS style.

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
11.3K
GitHub Stars
124.4K
GitHub Forks
1.1K
GitHub Forks
24.9K
Stacks
447
Stacks
34.4K
Followers
411
Followers
29.5K
Votes
331
Votes
1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 69
    Simple
  • 54
    Indented syntax
  • 38
    Efficient
  • 33
    Built for node.js
  • 32
    Open source
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
Integrations
Node.js
Node.js
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Stylus, React Native?

Sass

Sass

Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It's translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.

Ionic

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.

Flutter

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Less

Less

Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable.

Xamarin

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

NativeScript

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Framework7

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

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