React Native is one of the revolutionary frameworks that directed mobile app development in a whole different direction with its ability to produce applications for multiple platforms.
Developed by Facebook, it initially used Apple’s repository to build iOS applications and gain traction among iPhone users, but since the number of Android users rose at an exponential rate, Facebook adapted an entirely new repository to build both the iOS and Android applications.
Currently, in 2022, 6.6 billion people are operating on either of these platforms and are using applications in their daily lives. Having analyzed the need, React Native developers brought a solution to serve their needs by producing applications for both platforms using the same code. Indeed, it has become the most popular tool for millions of developers.
But nowadays, many frameworks are capable of building multi platform applications. React Native is constantly put under various arguments, and one of these is about the future of React Native and whether it will serve both platforms in the future. And to answer these arguments, our article on what the future scope of React Native is in 2022 will help you and many developers understand its trajectory and whether it’s worth learning or not.
What is React Native Framework?
React Native is a JavaScript framework that is used by developers to build multi platform applications, such as for iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and many others. It is based on Facebook’s JavaScript library, which is used to build interfaces for web applications, but instead of targeting web applications, React Native opts for mobile platforms.
In other words, it means even web developers can build native apps that reflect similar aesthetics to web applications. And this hugely benefits many businesses and startups to gain traction among mobile platform audiences.
Why Is React Native So Popular?
Popularity tends to increase when the tool provides some unique features that developers desperately need, and React Native exactly does the same. For this reason, it has been considered by popular brands such as Facebook, Tesla, Ubereats, Instagram, Airbnb, and Discord and many others. which further increases its popularity because consumers favor products offered by the most cutting-edge tech companies.
Moreover, React’s native functionalities, portability, and reliability stand out from other frameworks, which makes it a unique and effective tool. Apart from this, its quick operations speed up the development procedures to deliver software products within deadlines. And we all know how crucial meeting deadlines are. That’s why developers prefer React Native as the best weapon in their arsenal. React Native future heavily relies on developer satisfaction, and the community is promising to do so.
Another fantastic feature of React Native is that it allows programmers to reuse existing code from one application to improve and implement it in another, saving a ton of time and allowing programmers to concentrate more on adding new features to the app.
According to the above Google trend stats, the popularity of React Natives has been increasing for the past few years and still tops the chart. This shows how React Native’s future is still promising and the tool is widely accepted by developers to boost their React Native development process.
React Native Vs Flutter 2022
Both React Native and Flutter are ideal frameworks for building cross platform mobile applications. Though they are rivals, they have a similar goal, i.e., to provide the best performing mobile application for users. It’s not easy to comprehend which one is best as both have pros and cons that make them unique, but still, to glance at the React Native future, a comparison between React Native and Flutter will clarify many development aspects.
1. The Tech Stack
The prime difference between the two is that they run on different programming languages. For instance, Flutter has its own native programming language, Dart, that can be used to build mobile applications. whereas React Native heavily depends on the most widely used programming language in the world, i.e., JavaScript.
And many will agree with us that JavaScript is widely used, and choosing React Native for mobile app development will make more sense. On the other hand, Flutter requires knowledge of the Dart programming language, which should be first learned in order to opt for the Flutter ecosystem.
2. Cross-Platform Development
When it comes to cross-platform development, both React Native and Flutter offer similar features and functionalities for developing a mobile application(excluding some inbuilt unique features).
React was initially built to streamline the development process for both platforms, and React Native future lies on the foundation of performance improvement and ease of development. On the other hand, Flutter was built to make the application development process easier and more accessible using its Dart programming language, which is easy to learn.
The difference between the two is that in React, the UI components and code are not shared between iOS and Android, but rather are bundled separately for the UI using JavaScript. On the other hand, the UI and code components are shared between iOS and Android, which makes it much faster.
3. Performance
React Native is equipped with the improved JavaScript Virtual Machine, which gives it a speedy compile time with the JIT compiler. Again, you can ship the codes whenever required to get them executed in the native. Moreover, React Native offers nearly identical performance to a native iOS application, which is a plus point for React Native future aspects.
On the contrary, Flutter comes with its own improved compiler which loads codes for both the iOS and Android platforms. Because here, unlike with React Native, you don’t have to ship the codes, and because of this, you get faster native performance once you finish the project.
4. Learning Curve
Every developer considers the learning curve before choosing new frameworks and tech stacks. Because an easy learning curve saves time.
React Native future is appealing as it is a dream framework for developers. It runs on the JavaScript programming language. And since the majority of developers worldwide are familiar with JavaScript, they can choose this React Native with ease.
Flutter, on the other hand, employs the Dart programming language, which a lot of developers might not even be familiar with. The Dart programming language has been acknowledged as the most user-friendly language, despite the fact that many people are unaware of its development ecosystem. Even some of the new Dart users claim that learning it only takes a weekend.
Therefore, we strongly advise using both frameworks at least once. This will allow you to evaluate them both in-depth and determine which one best suits your requirements. Because as a developer, your choice will be responsible for React Native’s future or Flutter’s future.
Does React Native Have a Future?
Now we will discuss the React Native future. We have mentioned some of the factors below which will help us determine the react native future. And as a spoiler, we shall say that the react native future is more than bright. These factors boldly say that React is here to stay and will provide developers with enhanced features to elevate their development process.
1. Popularity
One of the important factors responsible for React Native future is its popularity. As discussed earlier, the popularity of React Native has been increasing for the past few years because it offers a whole new pipeline to work on building cross platform applications. Developers always look for a solution that can survive in the long run and, as it is used by many popular tech giants in their daily operations, hence it is safe to say that it will be serving a huge audience for a longer period.
2. Huge Community Support
Another important factor for a bright react native future is the active developer’s community. It will support you whenever you run into any difficulties. React Native is used by millions of developers worldwide, and there is no doubt that its community may already be filled with experts and tech professionals that can answer your queries and even refer you for a job role.
3. Regular Upgradation
One of the most promising aspects of React Native future is that this framework helps provide new updates to various applications so the users can enjoy the up to date features of an application. Sure, you might say that it’s nothing new since apps get frequent updates from the app store or play store.
This is where things are different. Unlike any platform, React Native makes updates available through the app only, so no more relying on getting approval from the app store to publish the latest update.
And as new technological enhancements polish the framework, the React Native new features will further boost developers’ development speed, which again will boost its popularity and the React Native future will become more promising.
Is React Native worth it in 2022?
React Native future heavily depends upon ease learning programming language, community and other tech giants support and technological enhancements. As we discussed earlier, React Native is one of the best frameworks if you want to build a cross platform mobile application. Considering it uses the most popular and well known programming language, it makes it easy for new as well as experienced developers to begin their journey of app development.
Apart from this, considering the popularity of React Naive, it’s safe to say that you won’t regret adapting to its ecosystem, as it is heavily supported by its community and Facebook. Not to forget, it has all the necessary features and functionalities that you need for developing a mobile app.
Moreover, as millions of developers use JavaScript in their daily life, chances are they will adapt to this framework, giving a huge boost to React Native future.
But if you are a fresher who is just beginning your career in mobile development, then you may struggle a bit. Still, it will be worth it as you will enjoy developing apps using React Native.
What Is the Future Scope of React Native?
React Native has been used among developers for more than 6 years now, and certainly gained momentum because of its appreciation among tech giants. However, React Native future scope is promising and is considered as the framework ahead of time.
In this digital age, we find every application that serves a particular service, such as food delivery, shopping, real estate, and many others. Before, we used to rely on stores and agents to get the items we wanted, but technology changed everything. React Native is boosting the entire IT ecosystem by making applications available at users’ fingertips. For this reason, even with the argument of React Native Future 2022, it is still the most robust tool that can transform the entire IT industry.
Furthermore, React is working on a large-scale project known as the Fabric, which aims to enhance React Native by making it more responsive and flexible. It will also push the framework to adapt to a hybrid JavaScript based infrastructure.
The Fabric project has already started enhancing React Native with its new threading model, async rendering capabilities, and simplified bridges. These and other changes will make React Native more agile and performative in the future, and hence the React Native future will be brighter than ever.
Conclusion
React Native future has been enhanced with its foundation of building cross platform mobile applications. Many tech giants rely on this framework to build and keep their mobile application up to date and this is one of the reasons behind its popularity. Although looking at its offerings, React Native provides the best features and functionalities to elevate the mobile app development process.
The React Native future is still and will be promising because it is undergoing technological enhancements such as the Fabric project. Apart from this, as the number of mobile users increases, the need to develop applications will gain huge momentum, and indeed, React Native will shoulder this opportunity and provide users with the up to date applications.
