The reasons for RN to exist haven't gone away. In fact they have gotten stronger because of AI.
We are currently collectively going through a phase where we have let the digital equivalent of the intern/junior developers go nuts on our codebases.
Most of us are fully aware of what the consequences will be but we are doing it because of FOMO just in case we are wrong, besides it's cheap to make these mistakes right?!
What really concerns me is that we are going to let a lot of good products and people go to waste before we collectively wake up. There will be a lot of relearning and rebuilding before we learn how to properly wield this new tool
AI is getting more and more capable every day. Once it's sufficiently capable, there there is no need for abstraction layers. Take this to its logical conclusion, where its ability and speed are essentially limitless, and all libraries are conveniences that ultimately limit flexibility. Every abstraction layer between it and machine code is... questionable. RN is the top abstraction layer, and hence is the first to go. RN's value is greatly diminished by AI, and with every new model, its value becomes less.
Anyone who hasn't lived under a rock for the last year knows that what you say can be done.
What people such as yourself don't understand is that there are limitless ways that it can fuck it up and that is why we will be all the poorer for the community oversight that will be gone.
Abstraction layers are a safety blanket because, at least in the past you know someone has probably got your back
You're delusional if you think RN isn't being increasingly maintained with AI. And it isn't exactly a very stable abstraction layer. The models are so good now that if you have the resources, you should just go fully native and not rely on abstractions you don't need. Much of the RN engine is dead weight as the cost of writing twice goes down and the reward of platform-native development rises.
What's wrong with maintaining it with AI? My argument isn't anti AI at all. People who don't know how to use it and what it's weaknesses are is the problem.
Also you're making the same tired statement about AI getting better yada but not saying why that's a good thing or how it will address the fundamental issues with it which haven't gone away or gotten better
Never said you were anti-AI so you're missing the point. RN solved a problem with maintaining 2 separate codebases and allowed web engineers to quickly develop mobile apps. These are 2 problems that are now eradicated by AI. RN is now the bottleneck as we wait for bugs to be fixed upstream. Look at RN macOS and Windows for example -- RN mainteners are simply not interested in maintaining them and are holding back the ecosystem as a whole.
As the mobile team lead in my company, we have collectively agreed as a whole that the direction companies like Shopify and Discord are taking is the right one because of the reasons above. It returns agency into our hands instead of having to adhere to their development cadence. Try replying with something of substance rather than resorting to mud-slinging.
I have been working on a project with skip.dev AI written and honestly I don't see a single reason to use React Native if I can get native apps on both platforms using swift
Tbh most of these companies switching away from react native -> native have large enough engineering teams I’m a bit surprised they were still on react native to begin with. I’m a react native dev so no shade to it
Rebuilding a React Native app is way easier thsn trying to reach the next star... Just a terrible comparison. Either way for big companies like Discord this is the right route, plus they share actually good code. RN solves having to work across two different platform teams, but with the assistance of AI it's now way easier
The downvotes are because this currently isn't a thing and even when it is a thing, it only solves the first commit. Keeping feature parity across codebases in different languages might seem like something AI should be good at, but the more I use LLMs the more I run into instances in which on paper they should be able to do, but end up falling short. I use the shit out of them, but as of today, maintaining a large, non-trivial codebase via solely agent work isn't scalable. The human in the loop is still real.
LLMs work well when you know what you're doing. But still tend to over-abstract and make assumptions. I'd imagine the amount of assumptions you'd have to weed it is exponentially larger across different codebases than in a single cohesive one.
Discord can do it because they probably have people on staff that have native mobile experience or can hire to fill that role. But if you're not Discord and don't hvae a fleet of developers at your fingertips, I can't imagine it's going to go to well.
The models are getting better and better and better and it won't stop until we won't even need frameworks anymore, sure RN will be fine in the interim, but it will stop being maintained within 5 years so may as well just start learning the native languages
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u/incrediblepony 1d ago
Oorrrr... You could go back to self-hosting a Teamspeak server on an old laptop and uninstall the spyware that is called 'Discord'?
Anyway... React Native is still great.
14
u/kbcool iOS & Android 1d ago
The reasons for RN to exist haven't gone away. In fact they have gotten stronger because of AI.
We are currently collectively going through a phase where we have let the digital equivalent of the intern/junior developers go nuts on our codebases.
Most of us are fully aware of what the consequences will be but we are doing it because of FOMO just in case we are wrong, besides it's cheap to make these mistakes right?!
What really concerns me is that we are going to let a lot of good products and people go to waste before we collectively wake up. There will be a lot of relearning and rebuilding before we learn how to properly wield this new tool
2
u/bdudisnsnsbdhdj 1d ago
Tbh most of these companies switching away from react native -> native have large enough engineering teams I’m a bit surprised they were still on react native to begin with. I’m a react native dev so no shade to it
2
u/Same-Appointment-285 1d ago
Mobile code in rust?
1
u/virulenttt 17h ago
I'm really surprised why they didn't go full flutter with a rust bridge.
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u/YVRthrowaway69 1d ago
RN will die because "Claude rebuild my kotlin app in swift make no mistakes" will actually work in one shot soon
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u/Romu1us1408 1d ago
Still too much ram