r/javascript • u/Wojtek1942 • May 06 '19
Microsoft launches React Native for Windows
https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/06/microsoft-launches-react-native-for-windows/43
u/prawnsalad May 06 '19
With this being MIT licensed, I can only hope vuejs support follows in future
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u/NbaHoopStar May 07 '19
Is there a Vuejs “native” equivalent?
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u/AwesomeInPerson May 07 '19
NativeScript has support for Vue, also there is Weex. (which is mainly developed by Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant)
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u/The_real_bandito May 07 '19
But NativeScript still doesn't have Windows support. But there is a community project going on in Github. Hopefully that becomes a thing.
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u/ejfrodo May 07 '19
Vue native just compiles down to React native, so I don't expect it will be too long 🙂
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u/MoronInGrey May 07 '19 edited May 07 '19
I'm wondering what the implications of this are, you can now create websites, mobile apps and soon windows applications all in one javascript framework. Do you guys think that this will push more people to adopt JS for creating different apps as you can deploy on multiple devices now without having to re-write much code?
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May 07 '19 edited May 07 '19
Microsoft supporting it officially is a huge push for javascript as a means to drive native apps.
Currently many desktop apps use Electron, which is a stopgap solution. I think the implications are pretty clear by now, everything that can be javascript will be javascript in the coming years. If people go to such lengths as to deploy html web views masked as "native" apps through Electron, it isn't a stretch to assume they'll use real native apps with less complications when it becomes available.
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u/cm9kZW8K May 07 '19 edited May 07 '19
Microsoft supporting it officially is a huge push for javascript as a means to drive native apps.
Even though I absolutely loathe and despise windows and everything microsoft, I have to admit they seem to be making smart moves. If they push JS like this they could continue to dominate desktops for another decade.
I wish the gnome foundation would get aligned around JS the same way.
I think the implications are pretty clear by now, everything that can be javascript will be javascript in the coming years.
Its clear to some of us, but tribalism is going to make some people late to the party.
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May 07 '19 edited May 07 '19
Well sure, it's weird seeing this unfold, i had my career path set with c#, xaml and wpf years ago, but due to odd decisions it all went downhill. I saw them try gather dev support with uwp/xamarin, no one cared any longer. If they don't want their OS become a host for electron/chrome apps, going RN is probably the only choice left. On the other hand it will set a nice stage for javascript rendering native content, not just on mobile. I kind of like where MS is going with Nadella.
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u/cm9kZW8K May 07 '19
There are still a big company, so its hard to say how long they will stick to the path.
For now at least, MS is acting like the most clued in of all businesses in the space right now. (with one exception)
a host for electron/chrome apps, going RN
Honestly I dont see a big difference there. I suppose it comes down to whether you reach the OS via a DOM or via an API like Node.js offers.
Personally, I like keeping the UI stuff DOMish, while using the node.js for the rest of the system calls makes more sense to me.
There is always going to be a place for sandboxing potentially hostile applications in a DOM, such as browsing the web. But an installed application probably deserves something better, like what node offers, imo.
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u/TaskForce_Kerim May 07 '19
What's with these surprising Microsoft launches? Damn. They're really trying.
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u/endianess May 07 '19
Will this have an impact on Xamarin? I've avoided it thus far because once MS said they weren't mobile first anymore I feared they would kill it off. I know they probably appeal to different devs (C# vs JS) but are they likely to support both going forward?
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u/eric_foxx May 07 '19
Nope, it won't have any impact on Xamarin! Check out this article from yesterday on where the .NET ecosystem is heading. These are two different teams within MS, both with a mandate to make awesome OSS stuff.
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u/bartturner May 07 '19
Will be interesting to see how this plays out. I suspect ultimately the competition will be Flutter.
"Flutter on desktop, a real competitor to Electron"
https://medium.com/flutter-community/flutter-on-desktop-a-real-competitor-to-electron-4f049ea6b061
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u/The_real_bandito May 07 '19
If it wasn't a Google project I will say this is the framework to use. But alas I don't trust them to back their stuff as the abandoned a lot of things. Having said that they have supported Dart for a long time.
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u/bartturner May 07 '19
Flutter already has over 60k stars on GitHub. It has the needed momentum. Also looks to be native for Fuchsia.
https://github.com/flutter/flutter flutter/flutter - GitHub
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u/The_real_bandito May 08 '19
Dart will be the native language yes. I think they plan to abandoned Java in favor to Dart? Which is a great idea.
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u/bartturner May 08 '19
You will be able to use a variety of languages with Fuchsia. We have the Rust bindings for example already. With FIDL it is pretty easy to add additional languages.
https://fuchsia-docs.firebaseapp.com/rust/fidl/index.html
But for GUI code it is Dart. That is very tied to Flutter and really necessary.
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u/azsqueeze May 07 '19
If only Google created a well maintained and popular products like Angular. Guess we'll never know what that world would be like...
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u/The_real_bandito May 08 '19
You probably didn't start from Angular when it was a concept but that framework was abandoned when they realize it sucked and made a new version of it.
So everything you knew about Angular 1 you had to relearn for the new version. And then came Angular 4 and it broke things again so users from Angular 2 had to relearn (not that much) some new concept and libraries that they changed yet again.
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u/R3DSMiLE May 07 '19
awwwwwfuck. i hate when i bet on the wrong horse. welp, on to actually learning Reactive I guess.
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u/The_real_bandito May 07 '19
React is not hard. to pick up anyways. I come from Angular background and React wasn't a hard pickup framework to learn.
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u/R3DSMiLE May 07 '19
Honestly? I just hate the jsx: I have already written html and JavaScript in the days of jQuery and we all came to the conclusion that it was shit... But now? Trendy!
And that's all I have against it. Welp, suck it up and learn it. Don't complain.
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u/tomius May 07 '19
React and jsx has little to nothing in common with html+jquery.
Honesty, if you organize it properly, it's super neat. Everything it's a component with a fairly simple purpose. And code is not that embedded in html as one might think.
It's basically just event calls (onClick, onKeyPress, etc).
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u/The_real_bandito May 08 '19
Haha I see you point. But lime you said, if you want to keep your job you will have to suck it up and learn it
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May 07 '19
That project is 3 years old and has been in the open source for quite a while. I'm wondering why they put out a press release over it just now?
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u/the5ervant 5TechCenter.com May 07 '19
I've seen this kind of projects long time ago..
Microsoft open sourced React Native for Windows over 3 years ago. The new thing that's happening now is they’re basically rewriting it from scratch for better performance. But the idea (and the project) is definitely not new.
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May 07 '19
Can you develop iOS apps on windows with this? I couldn’t find info on that.
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u/IWouldntCareEither May 07 '19
No, this is for developing Windows applications through the React Native API. The iOS platform is handled by regular React Native, but it's build tools and emulators are Mac only.
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u/ryanpeden May 07 '19
While that's true, if you're not doing anything that's particularly platform specific, if you write your app carefully, it'll run on all platforms with no to little modification.
Despite the title, RN for Windows isn't really new. Microsoft has built and supported it for years. Up until now, it had WPF and UWP back ends.
I wrote a Reddit reader (well, more like a partial Reddit reader) using RN for Windows, and it mostly just worked as-is on iOS, Android, and MacOS when I tried running it in RN on those platforms.
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u/IWouldntCareEither May 07 '19
Yeah I think the person I responded to was under the impression RN Windows was making full iOS and Android development tools available for Windows, which I was addressing.
That's good to hear. Given the disparity between Android and iOS I expected RN Windows and RN MacOS to have more differences. Would it be fair to say you didn't encounter issues because you weren't implementing many native features ie push notifs / camera use?
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May 07 '19
[deleted]
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u/MatrixEchidna May 07 '19
any Windows 10 device
Well here's the dealbreaker.
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May 07 '19
why should they develop new features for deprecated OSes? windows 7 extended support runs out next year and windows 8 in four years.
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u/zorndyuke May 07 '19
I guess the "Windows" part is what he was referring too.
All this unnecessary hate.
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u/MatrixEchidna May 08 '19
Because it alienates everyone who doesn't use Win10? Sure, it might make business sense for Microsoft, but at the cost of the non-10 userbase.
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u/[deleted] May 07 '19
This is huge - both for react and for Windows. React devs should be pretty excited about this