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  5. React Native vs Swift

React Native vs Swift

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Swift
Swift
Stacks21.9K
Followers13.6K
Votes1.3K
React Native
React Native
Stacks34.4K
Followers29.5K
Votes1.2K
GitHub Stars124.4K
Forks24.9K

React Native vs Swift: What are the differences?

## Introduction
When choosing between React Native and Swift for mobile app development, it is crucial to understand the key differences between the two technologies to make an informed decision.

1. **Coding Language**: Swift is predominantly used for iOS app development and is a statically typed programming language developed by Apple. React Native, on the other hand, uses JavaScript and allows you to build apps for both iOS and Android platforms using a single codebase.

2. **User Interface Development**: In Swift, user interface development is done using Interface Builder or SwiftUI, providing a wide range of design tools and capabilities. React Native uses JSX, a syntax extension for JavaScript, and offers a more flexible approach for designing user interfaces, making it easier to create cross-platform UI components.

3. **Performance**: Swift is compiled directly into native code, resulting in faster performance compared to React Native, which translates JavaScript code into native views. This difference can impact app speed and responsiveness, particularly in complex or computation-heavy applications.

4. **Community Support**: React Native has a larger community of developers contributing to its ecosystem, providing extensive libraries, tools, and resources. Swift, being a language developed by Apple, has strong support from the company with regular updates and improvements tailored for iOS development.

5. **Testing and Debugging**: Swift offers robust debugging tools and testing frameworks specifically designed for iOS app development, making it easier to detect and fix errors. React Native, however, may require additional setup for testing and debugging, as it involves working with JavaScript tools and frameworks.

6. **App Store Approval Process**: Apps built with Swift are more likely to pass Apple's strict App Store review process due to their native performance and adherence to iOS guidelines. React Native apps may encounter challenges during the review process if they exhibit performance issues or inconsistencies with platform-specific design standards.

In Summary, understanding the differences in coding languages, user interface development, performance, community support, testing and debugging tools, and app store approval processes between React Native and Swift can help developers make informed decisions when choosing a technology for mobile app development.

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Advice on Swift, 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

Swift
Swift
React Native
React Native

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

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
-
GitHub Stars
124.4K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
24.9K
Stacks
21.9K
Stacks
34.4K
Followers
13.6K
Followers
29.5K
Votes
1.3K
Votes
1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 259
    Ios
  • 180
    Elegant
  • 126
    Not Objective-C
  • 107
    Backed by apple
  • 93
    Type inference
Cons
  • 6
    Must own a mac
  • 2
    Memory leaks are not uncommon
  • 1
    Complicated process for exporting modules
  • 1
    Its classes compile to roughly 300 lines of assembly
  • 1
    Very irritatingly picky about things that’s
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
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Swift, React Native?

JavaScript

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

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

PHP

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

Ruby

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

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

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

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#

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

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

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.

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