React Europe
I spent this past week at ReactEurope (and then hanging out afterwards, naturally).
I gave a talk entitled React Native Retrospective. The audience was from a mix of backgrounds: about half said that they had never worked with React Native before; about half said that they had experimented with it a bit; and a small percentage said that they had actually shipped an app to the App Store.
My talk was evidently well-received, and I had a lot of good conversations with folks afterwards. Hereās some Twitter chatter!
I think the best talk so far at #reactEurope was the presentation @brindelle about #reactnative . Can't wait to read her book!
— Jonathan Lebensold (@jonlebensold) June 3, 2016
.@brindelle 's retro on React Native has been a highlight of #ReactEurope and we are excited to start using it more!
— eagerto (@eagerto1) June 3, 2016
As if I wasn't psyched enough about digging into React Native, @brindelle went and put it over the top... #ReactEurope
— Jon Bellah (@jonbellah) June 3, 2016
The React community - and really, the JS community in general - is so excitable, and optimistic, and enthusiastic. I walked away from the conference with renewed excitement, and Iām eyeing a bunch of side projects that I had previously placed on the back burner. Ah, the dangers of infectious enthusiasm! I did a write-up of my conference notes here.
React Linkspam
In honor of the conference, hereās some React-themed linkspam. Regularly scheduled linkspam will return next week.
react.rocks is, as someone described it, āPinterest for React components.ā
I gave the Deco IDE for React Native a spin this week. Itās still a bit rough, and doesnāt support the Android emulators, but I love the integration with the iOS simulator.
Cheng Lou gave us a great talk on the tradeoffs between different abstractions. The JS build pipeline case is of particular interest to me.
Relatedly, thomasboyt has a gist about why he thinks Webpack is the right approach to build pipelines. I donāt agree with all of these reasons, but I totally agree that webpack is way nicer than gulp/grunt.
Khan Academy has a great writeup from their React Native evaluation. For folks looking for examples of how companies evaluate tools like React Native, this is a great doc. TLDR; theyāre excited, but not adopting it yet.
React Native is super cool! We find lots of things attractive about it, and would really like to be able to share lots of code between our iOS and Android apps. Weāve done two internal projects so far evaluating RN and how it would fit with our requirements.
ā¦
there are still enough [barriers] that weāre not going to jump in quite yet.
As a counterpoint, Calvium discusses why React Native is a good fit for them.
āReact Native maximises our teamās native and JavaScript skills. It allows the delivery of real native Android and iOS apps quickly, accurately and at a much lower cost than traditional native development, without the usual tradeoff in performance or look-and-feel of browser-based hybrid systems, such as Cordova.ā
Hereās an ode to React Nativeās LayoutAnimation, complete with GIFs.
Books
I also read two books this week: Binti and Who Fears Death, both by Nnedi Okorafor. Who Fears Death is the best fantasy novel Iāve read in a while; expansive, mythical in tone, and almostā¦Iām gonna say āvindictively joyfulā in execution, especially as the plot resolves. Binti is a super-short sci-fi novella, pretty straightforward, but I still really enjoyed it.