React Native is a mobile application development framework based on the React web library and use the Javascript programming language. Its particularity is that it allows you to simultaneously develop and deploy your enforcement For the iOS platforms and android With a unique code base.

Since its creation in 2015, this Framework gained immense fame and became the most popular project of the year on Github. 4 years later, The success of React Native does not falter. What are the benefits of React Native Who explains its success?

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Development speed, the first advantage of React Native

A single Javascript code base for all platforms

One of the first benefits of React Native is the speed of development and maintenance of your applications.

Thanks to a Javascript engine which uses native instances, engineers only developa single code base for iOS and Android platforms. This allows them to simultaneously develop and deploy applications on all stores.

The development of your applications in React Native is all the more effective because the syntax of the React component library is very concise. It allows you to code screens very quickly compared to other solutions such as Flutter, cross-platform framework developed by google, which is more verbose.

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More efficient code recompilation

Also, developers also save time in development when compiling their code. Thanks to technologies like the Hot-reloading, each time the developer edits his code, the result is displayed live on his simulator. Conversely, with purely native solutions, it is necessary to rebuild the application, which takes between 10 seconds and several tens of minutes.

React Native allows a 30% development time savings compared to native technologies. And this has a double impact: improving the time-to-market of your app while reducing development costs.

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The homogeneity of iOS and Android applications

A single code base allows you to have two homogeneous mobile applications. The developer codes a single feature for both stores (Android and iOS). This helps to avoid version conflicts between the two applications if, for example, your company has two separate teams of Android and iOS engineers and the iOS team moves faster than the Android team. In addition, the rendering of your application is as aesthetic and efficient as on a native application.

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The ease of recruiting your team

React Native is based on the React library And the JavaScript programming language which was originally a web language. According to Stackoverflow, nearly 70% of developers know JavaScript, making it easy to build and train your team quickly. In addition to this idea, the fact that React Native is a framework whose entry cost is much lower: a few months can be enough to master it compared to years for other frameworks.

In addition, your developers will no longer be siloed in developments on a target platform, becoming multi-platform web and mobile developers, which is motivating to join a team!

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A native user experience

Other frameworks are based on the web but unlike them, React Native uses native components. For example, the loader of React Native framework is the loader that we find on iOS and Android while for the other frameworks, we have a loader that comes from a web view.

Existing methods of writing mobile applications generally use combinations of JavaScript, CSS and HTML that render web views. On the other hand, React Native allows you to write mobile applications as powerful as a native application without having to master the languages iOS (Swift or Objective-C) and Android (Java or Kotlin). React Native offers predefined core components that combine together to form custom components.

Result: your users can't see the difference between your React Native app And a native app.

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Sustainable technology thanks to its community

4 years after its launch, React Native is one of the most popular projects on Github with more than 2000 contributors and a very active community. The impact of growing a community around a open source project is fundamental to its success, it is the contributors who keep it alive by offering new components and thus making life easier for all users!

The fact that React Native was developed on the initiative of facebook (who uses it on some of its applications) has played on the success of a guarantee of confidence in the future of this technology.

Today, Facebook, Instagram, Uber Eats are applications that use React Native.

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Conclusion

Les benefits of React Native are multiple and all contribute to the reduction of your costs and the speed of development of your project. In an industry where it is not the big who eats the small, but the fast who eats the slow, time-to-market is a crucial factor that will be decisive for the success of your project.

BAM has built the largest expert team in React Native in France since the creation of the framework in 2015. Do not hesitate to download our Tech Radar to find out more!