Why You Should Hire a Web Development Company
Benefits of prioritizing a web development company to aid your business - particularly startups searching for tangible market shareholdings.
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React Native Development: Current Status
Apart from React Native's popularity, the framework is highly dynamic. This means that the functionalities integrated into React Native's framework are regularly changing. This dynamism is primarily because React Native is an open-source framework. Thus, there is a wide community of developers that can modify and improve the framework. Due to these frequent improvements, React Native is expected to undergo yet another architectural rollout with different features. Before getting into the details of the rollout, let’s determine exactly what React Native is and why it is important for your business.
What is React Native? Everything You Need to Know
React Native is an open-source Javascript framework used to write natively rendering cross-platform applications. Developers generally use React Native to build robust applications that can easily function on Android, iOS, and the web without compromising quality or user experience. The React Native framework is based on React, a Javascript library deployed by Facebook for building user interfaces. However, while React is fashioned for the web, React Native is more directed toward building mobile applications that have a native feel. Essentially, developers can easily write code that runs on both Android and iOS.
React Native was launched in 2015 by Meta Platforms, Inc (formerly Facebook). The React Native concept was birthed through an internal hackathon conducted by Facebook. The hackathon marked the beginning of a significant milestone that led to the launch of React Native. Not long after, React Native was open-sourced and made available on GitHub. Since then, it has become one of the most popular mobile app development frameworks. Today, React Native development is utilized by some of the world’s leading mobile apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Walmart, Ubereats, Pinterest, and Skype.
It is important to note that one of the primary anchors of React Native is cross-platform development. Cross-platform development involves building software that is compatible with different hardware platforms. For instance, if software can run on Windows and macOS, the software will be regarded as cross-platform software. React Native enables developers to achieve this cross-platform functionality during the process of building software. While React Native is undoubtedly one of the most popular frameworks for building cross-platform software, other frameworks provide the same capabilities as React Native. Some of these frameworks include Flutter and Xamarin.
Benefits of Using React Native
1
Code Reusability
One of the major benefits of React Native is code reusability. Since developers do not need to build native code for different platforms, they can easily use a single codebase to build software compatible with numerous platforms. Interestingly, web application code can equally be used for mobile app development, as long as the code is deployed using React Native. This means that companies can use the same code (with minimal alterations) to run their software on Android, iOS, and the web. More importantly, this code reusability significantly reduces software development time. Thus, your company's Time to Market can be shorter.
2
Wide Developer Community
As stated earlier, React Native was open-sourced in 2015. Since this landmark move, numerous developers have contributed to the framework’s development. In fact, there are over 50,000 active contributors to the React Native tag on Stack Overflow. Thus, while the Meta team is constantly devising ways to improve the framework, a wide pool of React Native developers is equally on board to provide improvements and expert support.
3
Cost Efficiency
Given that companies can run applications on different platforms from the same codebase, they do not need to hire different teams to cater to building software on specific platforms. This also means that companies can reduce their software development costs. There are estimations that React Native could potentially help companies save up to 40 percent of development costs.
4
Speedy Refresh Rate
React Native has a live reload feature that enables developers to see their changes reflected in real time. This way, you can easily run the app while updating changes. The ripple effects of React Native's fast refresh are numerous. However, the most important advantage is that the live reload saves developers from expending productive hours on compilation to incorporate changes.
5
Native-like Offerings
React Native ensures that software deployed on respective platforms has a native feel. This means that while platform-specific software is not built from scratch (hence, it is not native), applications built with React Native function like native apps. They perform, look, and feel like every other software built specifically for any platform.
React Native Development: Current Status
While React Native has come a long way since its launch in 2015, it is still far from perfect. React Native has several drawbacks such as slow data transmission and overdependence on bridges for thread inter-communication. Developers also face significant issues due to unexpected page jumps triggered by asynchronous UI updates. Due to these issues, new architectural rollouts are common for the React Native framework. The latest React Native architectural rollout is v 0.71. It was released in January 2023, and it will primarily be deployed to improve the performance and flexibility of the React Native framework. Some of the improvements to expect with React Native 0.71 include better Flexbox layouts and getting access to Typescript by default when you build using React Native through React Native CLI.
Conclusion
React Native is undoubtedly a great option for building functional cross-platform software. However, as a developer, it is important that you constantly stay updated on improvements made to the framework.
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