Comment by prophesi
1 day ago
I'm surprised that there was no mention of Expo. In the past, I would say bare-metal is better than Expo-managed React Native projects because of the limitations when it came to native modules. Fast forward to today, and anything you can do in a bare metal RN app can be done with Expo.
The biggest game-changer recently is Expo's Continuous Native Generation[0]. You can configure all of your native modules and ios/android files with a simple config file (which has its limits, whereby you'll need to write an Expo Config Plugin[1]). You will no longer commit the ios/android native code to your repository, and instead let it be procedurally built.
This resolved a lot of environment issues developers would often run into, and greatly simplified onboarding new devs. You can build your iOS/Android apps through the CI with ease. And you'll no longer be afraid of upgrading React Native, as Expo will handle all of the breaking changes in the native code for you.
My guess is that Shopify started with bare metal React Native apps (which I would have done the same 5 years ago), and now migrating back to Expo-managed projects is nontrivial. At my work we only manage one app, and it was well worth migrating back.
[0] https://docs.expo.dev/workflow/continuous-native-generation/
What are your thoughts on Flutter vs Expo vs React Native for someone that wants to build a native app for fun?
React Native renders actual native widgets to the screen, so for example on iOS you would write to cross-platform abstractions but you’d still get real UIKit components on the screen.
Flutter draws its own components that can look superficially like the target platform (or not, it’s up to the developer) in a manner closer to a game engine. HN seems to love Flutter and apparently the developer experience is excellent, but as a user I find Flutter apps to be in general a poor experience. They rarely look or act quite right (assuming the developers even try; I’ve used a number that look like someone has transplanted an Android app onto iOS).
This is fascinating how does Flutter try to make up for the performace hit that comes with adding a layer of abstraction?
My thought is that Expo prioritises web compatibility too much to the point that it leans into conventions with things like navigation that are web-oriented and these contribute towards an app not feeling like a native app.
None of those will get you a "native" app, but they might get you most of the way to a cross-platform app.
fair point but coin toss it is what I'm getting they are all equally good/bad?
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> Expo vs React Native
Expo is React Native with some nice things sprinkled on top. I'd go with Expo.
why Expo over Flutter? do React Native and Expo provide better abstractions over the Java/ObjC native APIs? again I've never done native dev just curious sorry if this isnt HN worthy comment
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