Since the App Store was born and the entire ecosystem of apps for the iPhone, we have been very interested in the design and development of mobile apps.
In fact for us the appearance of the iPhone was a revolution in the world of development. Suddenly it was affordable to create and sell applications in a store, where the user could buy your product from your mobile simply by pressing a button. This now seems like something everyday, was at that time a revolution that made a call for designers and developers to choose this platform to create and distribute their products.
At that time we started to develop applications for iOS and for third parties, and later forming part of other teams in our company. But gradually we felt a need for a framework for mobile development that can let us focus on multiple platforms, product design, conversion-oriented design and related strategy. Hence we chose React.
React and React Native
React is a tool that we found most comfortable. With the knowledge base of React and Cocoa Touch we were encouraged to enter the world of React Native.
React Native is a framework that uses JavaScript and React that allows you to create native applications using Javascript and ReactJS.
React Native is a JS library developed on Facebook and Instagram used to create native mobile applications. This is the open source framework recently developed by Facebook, which allows someone to write iOS applications (including Android) using JSX, a well-known HTML code similar to an aspect and JavaScript.
React Native facilitates the creation of native applications, fast, easy to use and responsive. It is definitely a good option when you need to develop large-scale applications with data that changes frequently. React Native can help you face the challenge successfully.
It also has a series of advantages that we have listed below and that have made us embrace it for our next apps projects.
1. The development environment
If you have used Xcode this scene will be familiar: you stop the simulator, you make a small modification of the interface, you launch the simulator again to see the changes, compile, compile, continue compiling, and 1 minute later the simulator starts with the small change made.
Working with React Native allows you to compile once, but the rest of the changes are updated in real time when saving the file. This is a real joy, and they make the development much more continuous and fluid. Also unlike Xcode or Android Studio, you can change it by the IDE or the text editor you prefer.
2. Native code
React Native projects are not an embedded web in an app. React Native does not create web apps like Ionic, Cordova, etc. But it generates, in the case of iOS, an Xcode project with its classes, just as you would if you developed the project natively. This allows me to embrace all the benefits of native development in terms of efficiency and the use of Cocoa Touch, but it also allows us to work with Javascript with React components.
3. Javascript and React
This is another reason to choose React Native. It is an ecosystem in which we feel comfortable and in which you like to move, as for example, the power to inject the styles of the components with Javascript.
4. Program once, use it everywhere
Another reason is that the same code can be used to create the application for iOS and Android. In addition, React Native has a series of specific components for both iOS and Android, allowing to choose one or the other depending on which platform the view will be rendered. It is an innovation created on the basis of the JavaScript framework of React.js; however, React.js is not natively supported in iOS (or Android) applications unless execution is counted within a web browser such as Safari or Chrome.
Conclusion
Choosing React Native gives us a series of important advantages. In short, it will use JavaScript and JSX to create a native mobile application, omitting completely all the disadvantages of hybrid development. Taking into account the advantages offered by this technology there is no reason why developers do not choose this excellent option in the search to create web and mobile applications.
No doubt knowing Cocoa Touch makes us a better iOS developer but today React Native has become the ideal solution for most of the customers. Additionally when you Hire React Native Developers you do not need to worry about their expertise in Cocoa Touch or Android as it is nowhere required.