React Native the Hard Way

Workshop @ Wix Kyiv, April 2018

Aaron Greenwald

Intro to React Native (Talk)	10:00
Environment Setup: Create a Project	11:00
Text Inputs & Buttons	11:30
Navigation	12:00
Lunch	13:00
A Chat Screen	14:00
Styling	15:30
Animations	16:15
Wrap-up	16:45
Beer	17:00

Survey

01 / Meet React Native

A framework for building native apps with React

- Facebook

Very popular, but young and unstable and increasingly stable

Wait...this isn't new

                
let [
    PhoneGap,
    Trigger.io,
    Cordova,
    Ionic,
    Sencha Touch,
    Kendo UI,
    Appcelerator Titanium,
    Xamarin
    ...rest
] = stuffWeTriedBefore;
                
            

02 / How it Differs

Webviews vs Native UI

Write Once, Run Anywhere

Write Once, Run Nowhere

Learn Once, Write Anywhere

03 / How it Works

JS Core

Bridge

UI

JS Core

Asynchronous

Serializable

Batched

UI

04 / How it Feels

Look ma, no XCode!

05 / Advantages

We need native mobile apps

but we hate writing them

Smoother transition from the web

Use the richest ecosystem there is

Develop quickly

Deploy like you're on the web

Learn once, write anywhere

Reuse code

We need native mobile apps

but we hate writing them

UX of Native

Developer Experience of the Web

But what if it limits me?

It won't.

By definition.

(Well, maybe it will...)

(more on that later today)

06 / It's Still Not Web Development

You can't always code push

Styling is different

Platform-specific thinking

Debugging isn't the same

07 / Should I Use It?

Results speak for themselves

Do I need native developers?

Learn Once, Write Anywhere

UX of Native <> DX of Web

github.com/aarongreenwald/rn-workshop-kyiv