Comment by Matej Ľach on "iOS Development : Swift vs React Native vs Objective C?"

If it's a somewhat complex app, I would recommend against anything but Swift or Objective-C, (Swift if you're starting entirely from scratch), because otherwise you app will simply not stack up against your native competitors in one way or another - you're at a disadvantage here, you'll always feel "not quite right" in some ways to your customers, especially if you plan to charge for the app.

If what you're building is just a mobile view into an existing web app, then React Native or Ionic, PhoneGap etc. are perfectly acceptable.

You don't understand what React Native is about... it's not based on web views, it uses native components.

Kenny Meyer - Where did I say that React Native uses web views?

@MatejLach - why are you putting React Native together in one group with Ionic or PhoneGap? RN uses native iOS components, while I and PG uses only webview - what's your opinion here?

@chris_parjaszewski I just wouldn't call anything other than Swift & Objective-C a native technology. Yes, React Native and Xamarin are more "native" than PhoneGap in the sense that they bridge to native components instead of just being a wrapped web app, but they're still wrappers as nor JavaScript, nor C# are officially endorsed by apple, meaning Facebook and Microsoft have to wrap around the new APIs first and thus are always behind. Try writing an iOS 10 app in React Native today and you're likely to find that support for new APIs announced at WWDC is not yet there. The app is also likely to run slower, simply because of the overhead that the glue code to bridge components, (i.e. the compiled code is unlikely to be idiomatic), incurs and for a complex app with possibly hundreds of classes, you usually can't afford it if you care about user experience

But most importantly, if it's a complex app of any sort, there will be time when you have to drop down to Swift/Obj-C because the React Native/Xamarin solution won't be up to pair, (so it doesn't even have the befit of being end-to-end in JS), and if you need help, everyone is going to assume Swift/Obj-C as a baseline, which will make things even more difficult. Even Facebook's own app isn't built with React Native.

Currently learning Swift, but both Facebook apps are built with RN. Also yes, old thread. Still shows in google for Swift and RN debates.

facebook.github.io/react-native/showcase.html

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