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path: "/android-java-react-native-same-app-my-experience" title: "Android Java / React Native, Same App, My Experience" published: true date: "15-09-2018"

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In this blog post, I would like to discuss why I avoided Android mobile development using Java. And enjoyed the experience much better when using React Native.

The application was really simple, all it was was a button that you clicked, and a new index in an array would be selected - and the contents of this array's index [which was a string] would be displayed.

I developed the application using Java and Android Studio and did not enjoy the experience. For various reasons, please note that I had only some previous experience with Java development at the time and slightly more experience with React Native. By no means does this post reflect the current potential experience of mobile development using these technologies as this experience is from ages ago.

Given that Android Studio is developed by Google - and I think we can both agree Google know how to develop software, I felt the experience to be slow, clunky and at times buggy. For example, there were instances where Android Studio simply did not want to emulate my application. And then there were times where my application would crash for no reason - and there was little I could do to determine why it crashed.

Whereas with React Native, the experience just felt so seamless. I used Expo which allowed me to easily configure and build my application with ease. The error output was so helpful, and I did not feel bogged down by all the options that Android Studio offered.

I also enjoyed not having to use the Layout Editor - and instead could easily prepare my user interface with something much closer to HTML than Android Studio's XML. And styling with CSS was also easier.

Long story short, the same app took me 30% of the time to produce using JavaScript compared to Java. This is why I love JavaScript - it is so productive, there is not a massive volume of typing just to accomplish a simple task like how there is with Java.

Please note, that there are now loads of options for mobile development, so you should not feel constrained [too much] by your tools.