I guess Kotlin and Kotlin Native (which runs on ios) could be a good started for building a KotlinReactNative, which allows creating an UI in a DSL based syntax that works on multiple platforms.
This just isn't true. Airbnb is actively using React Native a lot and has not "stopped using it seriously". I'm not sure where you got this impression. Some people responding to this are mentioning the transition of the potential native-navigation library to react-community. This is a library that we never actually used in production, though the plan was to move off of our internal library to this one shortly after open sourcing it. Priorities shifted internally (to other, more pressing react-native related things that aren't OSS), and we have not yet been able to do that. Since the community really wanted to work on the library despite us not actively maintaining it, transitioning it to react-community seemed like a better thing to do than further fragment the community by having people fork it. I'm still hopeful that we will be able to migrate to it in the future.
Source: I am the tech lead of React Native infrastructure at Airbnb and the primary author of native-navigation.
Where does AirBnB actually use ReactNative, and where is it purely native? I was in the understanding the move to ReactNative was not going "the way you preferred".
I can imagine there are some roadblocks using it everywhere. Or some hesitation from Native Developers.
For me also: Using JavaScript as a language run inside a interpreter inside my app doesn't seem like a smart move. Also native like navigation, activity lifecycle, animation etc are probably hard to get right with React Native.
Do you have any info on why Airbnb stopped using React Native? Would love a good read on why.
Right now, the only thing I'm currently aware of is that their navigation library (native-navigation [1]) is pretty much unmaintained and they are trying to plan out a transition to move it under react-community.[2] The only thing that hints at their slowing use of React Navigation is the mention of conversion to React Native's navigation getting a much lower priority to the point that the native-navigation library has essentially become unmaintained.[3] But when I initially read that, it didn't come off as Airbnb deciding to stop using React Native.
[1] https://github.com/airbnb/native-navigation
[2] https://github.com/airbnb/native-navigation/issues/145
[3] https://github.com/airbnb/native-navigation/issues/145#issue...
Is this true? I'd be interested to see a citation on AirBnB stopping using it, last I heard they were going all-in.
As for the issues with navigation, isn't it just that there isn't a great navigation library yet?
And one of the main persons behind ReactNative at AirBnB seems to be less enthousiastic in his latest interview.. However i cant find the interview anymore
I don't think Airbnb has ever been "completely going all-in on React Native" or "completely dropping React Native", but people always seem to want it to be one or the other. The truth is it's almost always something in the middle.
Like Leland said above, we're still working hard and making exciting progress on React Native but we continue to invest in native platforms as well and product teams make a case by case decision on which one to use.
Hope that clarifies things a bit :)
A lot will depend on why you need cross-platform support at launch. For most direct to consumer apps, your intended user base should skew to one platform or the other and should be large enough to support a beta and launch on a single platform. Not launching with both platforms supported won't make or break your app and launching with both without much mobile experience to begin with could even prove to be a distraction while you try to iterate on you're app's design.
If you're selling an app to businesses, then not supporting both iOS and Android at launch would be a real roadblock. In that case starting and maybe even staying with Ionic could make sense.
You wouldn't have this problem if you start a React Native project from scratch.
They seem to be still using React Native. Have you heard otherwise?