Moving Off React Native
Introduction
In this blog post, the author shares their experience of transitioning from React Native to Expo for mobile app development at Alan, a company. They praise Expo for providing a great set of tools that allowed them to smoothly migrate their codebase and enhance their development process.
Background
The author starts by explaining that their team initially chose React Native for mobile app development at Alan. However, over time, they faced challenges with maintaining code quality, releasing updates, and coordinating between teams. These challenges led them to explore alternatives that could address these issues.
Discovering Expo
The author mentions that they came across Expo, a set of tools built around React Native, during their search for solutions. They were drawn to Expo's promise of simplifying the development process, as it handles many common tasks out of the box, such as building, updating, and releasing apps.
Benefits of Using Expo
The author highlights several benefits they experienced by transitioning to Expo:
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Enhanced development process: Expo's comprehensive toolset allowed their team to develop, build, test, and deploy apps more efficiently.
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Improved code quality: Expo's tools helped in maintaining a cleaner codebase and adhering to best practices. The author notes that this significantly reduced the chances of introducing bugs and made development more streamlined.
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Easier app updates: Expo's Over-the-Air (OTA) updates feature made it convenient for the team to release updates to their app without the need for users to download a new version from the app store.
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Better coordination between teams: Expo's built-in features, such as sharing project links and QR codes for running and testing apps, enabled seamless collaboration between developers, designers, and other stakeholders.
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Reduced technical debt: Expo's focus on simplifying the development process helped the team reduce technical debt by eliminating the need for maintaining complex native libraries and platform-specific code.
Migrating to Expo
The author explains the process they followed to migrate their codebase from React Native to Expo. They started by setting up a new Expo project and then tackled challenges such as integrating custom native code modules and refactoring existing code to utilize Expo's APIs and libraries.
They also emphasize the importance of thorough testing during the migration process to ensure a smooth transition and minimize any unexpected issues.
Conclusion
The author concludes by stating that their transition from React Native to Expo was a success. They acknowledge that making such a bold move may not be suitable for every project and situation, but for their team at Alan, it proved to be the right choice. They encourage other developers to explore Expo as a potential solution for their mobile app development needs.