[krembanan]

> Cross Platform UI is a myth

How can you say this when many of the worlds most used apps are written in React Native? Same with Electron and desktop apps. I find it hard to believe you can be more productive writing native code when you need two entirely different codebases, compared to a single one, no matter how good of an iOS and Android developer you are.

[wk_end]

I don't know if I was using React Native "wrong" or what, but when I tried it out I found it to be a miserable experience. There's almost no usable components "built-in"...there seems to be an expectation that you cobble your UI together using one of a variety of different third-party components or component libraries, and every single one I tried was incomplete, buggy, poorly-maintained, poorly-documented...

Based on that trial: I'd much rather work on two sane codebases instead of one in React Native that's a maintenance disaster. As a bonus, since your apps will be native, they'll probably be faster, feel higher quality, integrate better with the platforms, etc.

[tentacleuno]

You were using it wrong IMO. The platform comes with a lot of built-in components (just look at the docs!) just from importing the React Native package.

[waboremo]

You do realize you still have to write a lot of native code in cross platform apps, right? It's what all the most used apps do.

This idea that individually you can be more productive on a cross platform app has no basis in reality. You're still having to concern yourself with platform specific aspects, except now you're also throwing in another layer into the mix for your shared aspects. These shared aspects tend to also not be up to user expectation most of the time, so you're having to rewrite things that comes easy for native apps, to ensure consistency and accessibility.

Such moves makes sense for Facebook. Given who they hire, what they work on. Same for Microsoft, but not sure using them is a good example considering their app experiences are universally terrible. For a lot of other places though? There has been a grand total of zero proven demonstration of increased productivity or dramatic savings. You still have to hire android/ios/windows/mac/linux devs respectfully whenever you eventually want to expand to those platforms.

[wiseowise]

> You do realize you still have to write a lot of native code in cross platform apps, right? It's what all the most used apps do.

You asked from cross platform UI framework, not for abstracted away mobile development framework.

[pjmlp]

Because when problems come up you need an iOS and Android developer to sort them for you.

[brailsafe]

It's just reps no matter how you do it.