Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

TLDR: React Native sounds incredibly awesome until you are 5 years and 150 devs into it and realize that this shit sucks.

But hey, if you are under 10 people and need apps everywhere, it is a nice thing.




Yeah, if you have a big team, everyone is going to be specialized anyways. You can have:

- Dedicated Android devs working on your Java/Kotlin/whatever Android app

- Dedicated iOS devs working on your Swift/Objective-C/whatever iOS app

- Dedicated web devs working on your JS/TS/whatever web app

- Dedicated BE devs working on your BE services, in 1-many languages that may be none of the above

But for startups, that’s not gonna happen, there’s gonna be wayyyy fewer devs and wayyyy less specialization. A lot of companies will be in that mode for many years, possibly indefinitely. In those situations, React Native can be a big win. I’ve been working the past 2 years at a relatively small startup, ~10 devs, that’s TypeScript everywhere. We’ve got 2 mobile apps (mobility space, a Rider and Driver app), both TypeScript/React Native/MobX. Rider is iOS/Android/web, Driver iOS/Android, very nice having 2 apps instead of 5. Then a web-only admin app in TS/React/MobX, and backend services in TS/Express. Same language everywhere, and similar mental model across all FEs, is a big productivity boon at our size.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: