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Can you talk about Exponent's road map? What are your plans for custom components?
The Exponent project roadmap is guided by the needs of product engineers. The feedback and requests we get from Exponent developers helps prioritize our projects across our mobile apps, APIs, and developer tools. One part of our APIs we get a lot of questions about is native modules.
Currently with Exponent, you write just JavaScript and there are a lot of nice things about that! But sometimes you need some functionality that can only be invoked from native code, whether it’s a custom native component or a native API we haven’t bridged to JavaScript, like iOS’s HealthKit or Android’s Voice Actions. The surface area of the mobile platforms is really big and we know developers have such a wide set of needs so we want to give you a way to write native code if you need to while still getting Exponent’s APIs and tools.
Our approach to this is something we call ExponentView. This new API lets you embed Exponent within a traditional Android or iOS project. You keep Exponent APIs and still write most of your app in JavaScript, but since you’re working inside an Android or iOS project you can write native code if you truly need to. You also can link React Native packages from npm even if they include native code. So after you start developing on Exponent, ExponentView is your escape hatch if you find yourself needing custom native code, although we strongly recommend staying on Exponent if you can. ExponentView is currently in development and we believe it addresses a lot of developers’ needs.
We also believe that many apps can be written in pure JavaScript and part of our roadmap is to bridge more native capabilities so that you don’t have to. Engineers working on Exponent are often responsible for both Android and iOS so that we give you APIs that feel coherent and expose cross-platform behavior and platform-specific capabilities for when you need them. As Exponent’s APIs have grown, we’ve seen them accommodate more and more developers’ needs. With new native APIs and ExponentView both on our roadmap, we definitely have developers in mind!