Isn't reimplementing all your UI widgets, views, layouts and interactions for multiple platforms still a ton of work though? I'm not meaning people using things like React frameworks, but the suggestion of sticking to native only.
Also, you usually get better tooling in regards to instrumentation and the like.
When it comes to native stuff it get’s tricky. As always it really depends on the use case of the app. In our case we develop a navigation app using a native SDK to show a map + turn-by-turn nav + offline maps etc. This is probably the most non ideal use case for a hybrid app. We developed a few plugins to share data between js /native to initialize the map etc. However, the idea of sharing business logic is long gone. There’s so much stuff that’s happening natively and each time we implement it on Android, we have to switch to iOS and implement the Swift version of it.
Some others have also mentioned that a single person now has to know three platforms (iOS, android and Cordova (in our case with ionic + angular). This is true and the real downside. I’m quite familiar with iOS and android yet I’d never call myself a native iOS / Android developer. Yet, I’ve to write so much native code regarding permission handling, geolocation, threading (Ui/non-ui) and there’s always a ton to stuff happening from version to version (e.g. 16 KB Page Size on Android, iOS support for rotation the device/adaptive layout on iPadOS, etc). This is where a lot of time is lost. And the time is not only lost there but also with unmaintained outdated community plugins you suddenly need to understand and fix.
RN is a mess to get into, but once you've found a good stack you can really fly. We are working on a starter kit based off our experience that I think should represent the best possible starting point once it's released sometime before the EOY.
Anyone have any experience of doing this for a complex and long-life app?
Sounds like a nightmare that would increase friction and decrease development fun by x10 because of the huge overhead and tedium of having to keep your features and tests in sync across platform for every change you want to iterate on, and requiring developers be proficient at multiple stacks.
I get the usual complaints about bad webview implementations, but separate native codebases sounds like a prohibitively enormous tradeoff if most users only perceive the UX as being a little better than a good webview implementation. I feel like I'm missing something that native codebases is suggested as if it's a simple alternative, or this is coming from people that aren't actually involved in this?