Jamon, Robin, and Mazen react to the 2023 State of React Native Results by Software Mansion! Follow along as they break down all of the results and (spoiler alert) RNR is still your favorite podcast.
Jamon, Robin, and Mazen react to the 2023 State of React Native Results by Software Mansion! Follow along as they break down all of the results and (spoiler alert) RNR is still your favorite podcast.
This episode brought to you by Infinite Red! Infinite Red is a premier React Native design and development agency located in the USA. With five years of React Native experience and deep roots in the React Native community (hosts of Chain React and the React Native Newsletter), Infinite Red is the best choice for your next React Native app.
Connect With Us!
Todd Werth:
Welcome back to React Native Radio Podcast, brought to you by the new Apple Vision Pro. Finally, you have something to do while your Tesla drives you to work. Episode 2 88 survey says React native got more popular.
Jamon Holmgren:
How do you two our new recording studio here.
Robin Heinze:
It feels very multifaceted.
Jamon Holmgren:
Multifaceted.
Mazen Chami:
I was going to say welcome to the multiverse.
Robin Heinze:
Oh,
Jamon Holmgren:
The multiverse. Yeah. Unfortunately we're not all in the same room. That would be awesome. Wouldn't it be cool to have an actual recording studio? We can
Robin Heinze:
Hang out. That would be so fun. That would be
Jamon Holmgren:
Cool. It'd be super fun, but we don't have that, but we do have some new software that we're trying out and it's not really made for recording. We're still recording this locally and we will ask Todd and Jed to make us sound good later. But we are using Multi, which is sort of like it's I guess Screen Hero back in the day. It's like, it's
Robin Heinze:
Kind of like Screen Hero plus Zoom.
Jamon Holmgren:
Plus Zoom. Yeah, they're using the Zoom architecture and it's really, I don't know, it's kind of a Zoom alternative, but you can do a lot of really cool stuff with screen sharing and we've been trying it out lately. So yeah, the Recording Studio is the name of the room that I created
Robin Heinze:
Specifically for today.
Jamon Holmgren:
Right, exactly.
Robin Heinze:
I like it a lot. It's really easy to pair. You can directly take control of the other person's screen and it just makes it really easy to collaborate on stuff
Jamon Holmgren:
And there's this really cool feature where you can just draw on the other screen just by clicking and dragging. You shouldn't have told me that, and it goes away. Oh, great. Okay, now I'm getting graffiti on my screen. Thank you. Thank you very much. But that's not why we're here. We are here to talk about React native and specifically we're going to be talking about the State of React native 2023 survey, which I am really excited to dive into. None of us three have actually read through this yet, so this is brand new to us. I have seen one section, which I will talk about when we get to that section because I had to review it in order to give a quote, but until then, this will all be authentic reactions to what we're seeing for the first time, which is really fun. But before we do that, let's get a word from our sponsor. This episode is sponsored as always by Infinite Red. Infinite Red is a Premier React native consultancy located fully remote in the US and Canada. If you're looking for React native expertise for your next project, hit us up at Infinite Red slash React native and don't forget to mention that you heard about us through the React Native Radio podcast.
Okay, let's get into the State of React native survey. First off, I want to shout out Software Manchin who put this together. Really cool that they do this. They started, I think last year was the first year and now this year they have another edition, so you get to kind of compare the two years together, so that's pretty cool. If you want to see this, you can go to results dot state of react native.com.
Robin Heinze:
We'll put that in the show notes as well. As always.
Jamon Holmgren:
So in the intro, one of the things that's catching my eye here is that there are more than 500 new respondents, so almost 2,400 unique respondents to the survey, so getting more and more developers into this survey and representing more viewpoints. So that's pretty cool. 2,400, that's a pretty successful survey in my opinion. I
Robin Heinze:
Wonder, I am honestly curious what the total number of React native developers out there is, but I don't know if there's any way to ever know for sure. Yeah,
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, there's the Stack Overflow survey and there's also state of JavaScript survey and a few others. Maybe those would be representative to some degree, but yeah, I don't know. That's a good question. This is like the 24. I wonder how many had Infinite Red actually filled this out. To be honest, I'm really curious.
Mazen Chami:
Surveys are usually harder to take. I feel like sometimes they just seem like, I mean, I hate to say it, but they seem like a time suck, but at the end of the day, getting to see the results, this one are very important. I think other surveys like the Stack Overflow, I remember taking it a couple years ago. I took it thinking that I would see the results after, but I think it was really hard to get the results. Unlike this one well advertised Twitter. Yeah,
Robin Heinze:
I think that's important. If you put out a survey like this, you have to make sure you well publicize the results because over and over, as soon as I took it, I was like, man, I can't wait to see what other people answered. The reward for putting the time in. And as someone who has been responsible for surveys, I always take surveys when I'm offered because I know how annoying it is to put out a survey and have no one take it.
Jamon Holmgren:
Isn't it funny how it changes once you're in charge of something you're like, wow, I wish everybody would do this thing. And then you have more compassion for the people putting it together.
Mazen Chami:
And it's also good UI they have put in place. There's a lot of charts, which I usually prefer to read.
Jamon Holmgren:
I wonder if they use something. I feel like I've seen this UI before. This must be a pre-made.
Robin Heinze:
I think it's this similar to the software mention docs. The Reanimated docs look a lot like this.
Jamon Holmgren:
True. Oh, okay. So maybe they did build it. So the first section we're going to look at, we're not going to look at every section, but the first one is about you. So it's demographics and what stands out to me is that over half, well over half, 57.3% are between 25 to 34, which represents everybody in this call except for myself.
Mazen Chami:
Well now, oh yeah. When I took the survey, I was at the 34 mark
Jamon Holmgren:
Oh
Robin Heinze:
Five. Now you turned 35 since the survey.
Jamon Holmgren:
Since I took the survey. I forgot that. Oh, good call. Wow. Well, welcome to my, barely into my demographic because the next one's 35 to 44 and I'm 42, so wow, you're on the bottom end of that. I'm at the top end of that.
Robin Heinze:
You guys leave me behind. I am not even 34. I turned 34 in a couple months.
Jamon Holmgren:
By the way, I said everyone in this call, because we do have a couple others hanging out with us right now, they're not talking, but Justin and Jed are in here too, and they're both in this 25 to 34 range as well. There is a very small amount of people under
Robin Heinze:
One. There's some under
Jamon Holmgren:
18 or equal to 18 it looks like. So my son Cedric, if he took the survey, probably not, but if he did, he would be in that
Robin Heinze:
90%. He just turned percent 19 though,
Jamon Holmgren:
Right? He did, yeah, he's 19. So the next cohort would be 19 and 24. That's almost 19%, and then above 45%, it's Slim Pickens. There's 3.4%, 45 to 54, there's 55 to 64, 0 0.4%, and there's even someone above 65, maybe 0.1%.
Robin Heinze:
It's one person out there. Yeah. I am so curious to see what these surveys are going to look like in 20, 30 years. What are all of us, all of those people in the 25 to 34 category?
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah. Is that just
Robin Heinze:
What are we going to be doing in 20, 30 years? Are we all just going to be managers not coding anymore, or is the whole demographic just going to shift and you're going to have a lot of 50 something like 60 something.
Jamon Holmgren:
I predict it's going to be a lot like Wally. We're going to be sitting in chairs sipping on Soylent and watching VR with our
Robin Heinze:
Apple. I mean Vision Pro Vision
Jamon Holmgren:
Pro Vision Pro 14 will have just come out and yeah
Robin Heinze:
AI will be writing all of our Apple.
Jamon Holmgren:
Interestingly, 34% didn't even answer this question.
Robin Heinze:
Why do you even take the survey?
Jamon Holmgren:
I know, right? Come on, Tristan. I think this is a common thing because I am looking through the answers and a lot of them are
Robin Heinze:
34. Were like 34% not answers. They just go there. Did you just
Jamon Holmgren:
Hit submit and check it off like, Hey, I did it.
Robin Heinze:
Why?
Jamon Holmgren:
Okay. Company size, it's all over the board. I don't know if it's worth talking about this one. It looks like everything is just Oh,
Robin Heinze:
Yeah, it's really all over the map.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah. Anything from one person, which is like 8.4% up to a thousand people, which is like 11% and everything else is right in that range. Not very
Robin Heinze:
Far off the bat Country region. Mostly the us. Lots of India,
Jamon Holmgren:
But not far behind India. Yeah, I mean where is
Robin Heinze:
Poland is fourth down on the list. Only percent. If you compare the size of Poland to the size of the us, they're very well represented in React native for how
Jamon Holmgren:
Big they are. Now, to be fair, the company that put this survey together is based in Poland. Based in Poland, so they're going to have more reach. Why? So just keeping that in mind. We
Robin Heinze:
Have two call Stack and Software Mansion are both
Jamon Holmgren:
Bullish, right? But US was only 12.8%, so there's a pretty good
Robin Heinze:
Representation. The rest of it is all spread out, so it's a very global framework. Yeah,
Jamon Holmgren:
France is pretty strong. I didn't realize how strong France is. They're 8.2% Germany, which is right. There is half that. And then Brazil really coming in with, I think they're number five years. So some Canadians
Mazen Chami:
In Italy, 1.3%. Yeah, we had Ricardo and on the podcast and Italy is not that high up on here.
Jamon Holmgren:
There's the uk,
Robin Heinze:
Which makes sense with the meta offices in London,
Jamon Holmgren:
Ukraine, Turkey, Spain. It's interesting looking at this compared to our demographics for React Native radio and seeing those, we talked about that a little bit in the wrap up episode for 2023, so go check that out. If you want to hear about our demographics higher education degree, it looks like, wait, what does this even mean? Is higher
Mazen Chami:
Education
Robin Heinze:
College or masters? No, you don't have one? Yes, you have one and it's related or Yes, you have one, but it's not related.
Jamon Holmgren:
Okay, so 67% have CS degrees or something similar. And then
Robin Heinze:
I'm trying to remember what I answered for this one. Have unrelated. Yeah, same because my degree was in math and economics, but not,
Jamon Holmgren:
Oh, that is a little vague, isn't it? It's
Robin Heinze:
Like a little bit it. It's kind of related, but not, I don't remember what I answer, to be honest. I think I probably put
Jamon Holmgren:
Related, I would put unrelated for that. Yeah, just simply because we don't do a lot of, I mean I guess you learn a lot of logic, so that would be applicable.
Robin Heinze:
Yeah, it could go either way.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, that's true. I was definitely in the no part of this, no degree. Not even close.
Robin Heinze:
You started a company instead.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah. Yeah. I guess that was an education in and of itself, years of experience. I actually want to talk about this one for sure. So less than one, 14%, two to
Robin Heinze:
3, 2, 3
Jamon Holmgren:
Years.
Robin Heinze:
Most people came in two to three years ago, which is really encouraging. Two to three years ago is really kind of when React native got stable and a lot of bigger companies started adopting it. And
Jamon Holmgren:
So Robin, how many years of React native experience do you have?
Robin Heinze:
Summer 2017 is when I started. So
Jamon Holmgren:
7, 7, 7 years almost. Yeah,
Robin Heinze:
Six and a half.
Jamon Holmgren:
So you are solidly in the top group. 16%
Robin Heinze:
As is, I mean a lot of infinite. Red is
Jamon Holmgren:
Most infinite Red is up there. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean that's pretty cool. Again, that 34% no answer.
Robin Heinze:
What are you guys doing?
Jamon Holmgren:
I don't know, years of total experience it looks like, and this is a little different, six to 10 because it goes up to 20. Yeah, that's the biggest, right?
Robin Heinze:
I mean, I switched my career to coding 10 years ago almost. Oh my gosh. Almost to the day.
Jamon Holmgren:
Okay.
Robin Heinze:
Yeah, that's funny. Oh my gosh. I actually want to go look. I'm pretty sure it was February 1st week of February that I started my coding bootcamp in 2014.
Jamon Holmgren:
Is that right? Wow, that's amazing.
Robin Heinze:
That's so cool.
Jamon Holmgren:
That is cool. 10 years.
Robin Heinze:
Yeah, 10 years.
Jamon Holmgren:
That's something to celebrate. And then gender.
Robin Heinze:
This one makes me sad, but really I think it got better from 2022, but it's not great.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, so let's look at count. So 1,477 male,
Robin Heinze:
49.
Jamon Holmgren:
49 female. Oh
Robin Heinze:
Wow. And then there's
Jamon Holmgren:
12 nine non-binary non-Binary. Binary. And what's nl?
Robin Heinze:
Not
Jamon Holmgren:
Listed? Not listed
Robin Heinze:
Or something maybe? I'm not sure. Yeah,
Mazen Chami:
Probably.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, but I mean we're talking, yeah, 49 versus 1,477. Yeah.
Robin Heinze:
Wow. It's something to work on. Yeah, I got to tweet more.
Jamon Holmgren:
Our percentage is better than that in Infinite Red. I will say that.
Robin Heinze:
Yeah, my whole team, the team I'm on right now is all women.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So that's most of the demograph. There's a few other things you can look at there. Let's look at developer background. So before React native, oh, we were just talking about this. So before React native, there we go. The majority were React like web developers
Robin Heinze:
Looks like
Jamon Holmgren:
60%,
Robin Heinze:
But if you combine React developer and front end developer other than React, it's almost
Jamon Holmgren:
Wait, that percentages, doesn sense, that's over a hundred percent that people did multiple things. You could choose multiple.
Robin Heinze:
Oh, you could choose multiple. Okay.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, so over a hundred percent, but that's okay. Oh, I see. Yeah, so then there's backend developers like PHP, node, JVM, like Java, Python, that's
Robin Heinze:
39%, which I think that's what I answered because I was doing Rails.
Jamon Holmgren:
14% started with React native, so that's pretty interesting. As far as the native developers, it's 13% and 12% Android and iOS respectively. So some native developers, not as many. The vast majority were either web front end or some backend developers, and then there's a few desktop developers.
Robin Heinze:
It really backs up your claim about the advantage of React native over things like Flutter because you have this entire population of front end web developers, specifically React developers, but JavaScript in general who can make the transition easily to react.
Mazen Chami:
And I also see that in the same vein as being a React developer makes it very easy to transition to React native. 61% it seems like made that transition from React to React native. That's actually something we could talk about on a different podcast where we're working right now, jam and you and I and on putting together an education course that's a hard prerequisite. Do you have React background or even just JavaScript in general? Do you have that background? If you do, you can then take the beginner course, kind of like we do for Chain React, and if you don't, then here are some prerequisite classes to take before you attend. Yeah, exactly. So it is vital. I mean at the end of the day, we're pretty much doing React, adding a little spice to it to make it native.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, that's right. Next we have open source contribution to React native libraries. 32% say Yes, which is a pretty healthy percentage. That's awesome. 64%, no, and for some reason, everybody filled this one out. There were only 3.2% who didn't,
Robin Heinze:
And maybe a bunch of them just didn't want to answer any demographic questions. I'm guessing.
Jamon Holmgren:
Oh, you know what? You're probably right. Yeah, that does make sense. Okay. Yeah, because the rest of these contribution to React Native Core,
Robin Heinze:
8%,
Jamon Holmgren:
8% have
Robin Heinze:
That tracks. I think for me
Mazen Chami:
It makes sense. I think one of the gripes with React Native was it was hard or to know where to begin or how to begin, and I think most people just jump into a PR and
Robin Heinze:
They're a process. There's so much context that it feels like only people at Meta have for how the internals work.
Jamon Holmgren:
If you haven't, then 89% you're in the 89%, which obviously it'd be nice to improve that, but it's also a hard problem because like you said, it's a pretty complex system. I
Robin Heinze:
Always struggle with the industry sector questions on surveys because I feel like the list of industry sectors is really antiquated and hasn't caught up with modern day career paths. And for technology it's always, there's like one bucket, it's just like technology.
Jamon Holmgren:
Technology or even worse, it'll say computers.
Robin Heinze:
Computers.
Jamon Holmgren:
I just remember one time filling out a form for when I started my business, I was filling out a tax form or something in Washington State. The category I was in was like logging, gambling and other, it was named logging, gambling and other or something like that.
Robin Heinze:
Oh my gosh, it was
Jamon Holmgren:
So ridiculous.
Robin Heinze:
The list that was provided here for this survey was better than most because at least had consulting and services, crypto and Web3 programming and technical tools, and then a large number of people said finance.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, that was the number one by a
Robin Heinze:
Lot
Jamon Holmgren:
With 20%. And then education was number two with 16% entertainment, 13%, which is no social media is down there with 9.2%. Consulting was just above that 10%. And then just in order crypto logistics, programming, technical tools, travel, transport, automotive, news media, and it kind of goes down from there. Very long tail of different things. Energy manufacturing, cybersecurity. Yeah, that's an interesting one. A lot of different industries, react native doesn't just go into one particular type of industry, although I will say finance being number one is kind of mind blowing to me.
Robin Heinze:
I want to know where all those people are working.
Jamon Holmgren:
Well, I know Chase uses it like JP Morgan Chase,
Mazen Chami:
So does Coinbase, so I guess they consider themselves finance or crypto and Web3.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, I guess
Mazen Chami:
Crypto, but that's also pretty cool to see finance having such a high representation that okay, react native. I bet.
Robin Heinze:
I bet you there's a lot of finance companies that don't even speak publicly about using React Native, but their developers are taking the survey.
Jamon Holmgren:
That makes sense.
Mazen Chami:
They just write them out. Absolutely
Jamon Holmgren:
Skip that. They talk about what platforms you target and
Robin Heinze:
Not Android, iOS and Web are pretty dominant.
Jamon Holmgren:
Android and iOS 96 and 94% respectively, so people are pretty much always, almost always targeting mobile when they're using React Native web at 22.5%, which is a pretty healthy percentage. And then we have a very tiny 5% Mac os, 3.4% Windows. Android TV is 2.6% TV os, so still the vast majority are using it for mobile and web with a little bit of Mac Os and Windows and tv.
Robin Heinze:
Well, TV is such a targeted platform. There's very few apps that you actually need to use on your tv.
Mazen Chami:
There's a lot of interaction gesture differences between mobile and TV that just I guess makes it tougher.
Jamon Holmgren:
This one I think is pretty interesting as well. What desktop os are the developers using Mac Os 80%.
Robin Heinze:
I mean Xcode is the large contributor to that. Expo is making it easier to use Windows with EAS, but yeah, it's mostly just easier to have Mac infrastructure to build Mac to build a iOS apps. I
Jamon Holmgren:
Wonder if 12% are just all the Microsoft engineers for Windows.
Mazen Chami:
What's the count on that?
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, let's check 288, so there's probably a few others. Yeah, 154 using Linux as well, so
Robin Heinze:
6.5 and then 6% on Linux. We CU we don't understand you, but we see you.
Jamon Holmgren:
Another one is how do you use React native, whether it's professionally as a hobby or as a student and professionally it looks like it's the vast majority, 87% and a few use it just as a hobby, 8% and a few students as well, but most people who filled out the survey are using React native professionally. Makes sense.
Mazen Chami:
At the bottom of this page, the developer background tab, Steven Moys asked some of the React native community to share their opinions about the results and there's this nice little blurb at the bottom. I'm not going to read it. Every single one of these pages has some of these. I urge all the listeners to take a moment and just kind of go through all the different pages and read these quotes. They do provide a little deeper insight into some of these results and I think that's very helpful to have these.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, and speaking of which, in the next section, state management, I was the one who was asked, somebody
Robin Heinze:
I recognize was featured at the bottom.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yes. They had to bug me a few times, which I'm not proud of, but I did eventually get it in there. Doesn't sound like me at all. No,
Robin Heinze:
That page would of course be state management.
Jamon Holmgren:
The state management one is really cool because they have this chart, interactive chart that you can hover over that shows you last year versus this year usage, retention, interest and awareness. Make sure you're on the right tab. We didn't just do this whole section on the wrong tab and then realize we're on the wrong tab. Of course. So yes. One of the interesting one is of course react like hooks and this state and whatever that's at 97, 90 8%, but Redux talk about Redux.
Robin Heinze:
So Redux had a huge drop, but it looks like that's because Redux Toolkit was not included in the survey choices last year and was included this year, and so I think a lot of the people that answered Redux last year must've been using Redux Toolkit because the Plain Redux went down a lot
Mazen Chami:
And Redux Toolkit
Jamon Holmgren:
And Redux Toolkit
Mazen Chami:
Made that jump to third place
Robin Heinze:
Is third place behind React, just like Plain React hooks and State and then Plain Redux and then Redux Toolkit. So there's a clear state management favorite.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, I think this React Hooks is kind of who doesn't use React Hooks? Even if you're using some other state, you're going to always use something like that,
Robin Heinze:
Right? I mean it's at 98%. I mean people use React. That's how React works. I'm
Mazen Chami:
Interested to know it's
Robin Heinze:
Fundamental
Jamon Holmgren:
Two, I wish they had just put only React Hooks, right? That had been exactly, obviously you're going to use it, but
Mazen Chami:
2% of people that said they don't use hooks in this state. I'd like to talk to them and just see how they managed to do that or if they just put everything in their other states like Redux or 10 Stack Query, whatever it may be, and use that exclusively.
Robin Heinze:
Yeah, there's not really a good measurement here of people who only use React State or context.
Jamon Holmgren:
React Query is kind of a weird inclusion here because it's not really state management. It's a little bit more like synchronizing with server, but it does have a state management component, so I guess that makes sense. 55%, but you can put it with other things like Redux and whatnot. There's also Apollo client, which is kind of like a whole other thing. It has also declined a little bit, gone from 42 down to 38% Zet stand, huge, huge rise in popularity went from
Robin Heinze:
22%, which is funny because the way that grass is animated, it looks like it's going down, but
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, I know
Robin Heinze:
That's not true. It's not it because Redux Toolkit jumped the list.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, exactly, and kind of pushed everything down, but Tand has actually gone up and I talk about that in my blurb at the bottom where I basically say that Zest Tand is, it is familiar, it looks like Redux, which is one reason I don't like it. Sorry, that 10 people. And then you have things like MobX, Joe Tai, MobX, state Tree, which of course I'm one of the maintainers of and we use here at Infinite Red and then way down at the bottom we've got Recoil and X State. I made a little comment about X State. It has really, really high interest and really low usage, so it's like everybody's like, cool, that's a cool idea. I would love to use that someday. And then they don't use it. Oh no,
Robin Heinze:
That's funny.
Jamon Holmgren:
Sorry David if you're listening to this, but yeah, that's unfortunately where it's been and yeah, I gave a blurb at the bottom talking about how Redux is slipping a bit, but Redux Toolkit has given new life to the project and whatnot. So moving on to navigation, so this one with the usage, again, you have retention, interest, usage and awareness.
Robin Heinze:
The ranking,
Jamon Holmgren:
The big
Robin Heinze:
Winner expo router went from 12% to 40% in terms of usage.
Jamon Holmgren:
It helps that it existed in 2023 and not so much in 2022.
Robin Heinze:
I mean it existed enough to be on the list. Early version,
Jamon Holmgren:
It was beta I believe,
Mazen Chami:
Or V one, it
Robin Heinze:
Was Alpha Alpha if I remember right. It was like Alpha, alpha
Jamon Holmgren:
Expo router went from beta to version three last year I think.
Robin Heinze:
Yeah, it's very stable now.
Jamon Holmgren:
And the one that's bleeding users is React native navigation by Wix.
Robin Heinze:
Yeah, react navigation is so ubiquitous.
Jamon Holmgren:
Some people still use React Router interestingly, and then there's a new one on the list Alito,
Robin Heinze:
So you may use multiple. I know on cross-platform projects in the past I've used React Navigation alongside React Router. If we have a web component component, react navigation for Web has gotten better, so we didn't do that on our current project, but I've done it in the past, so it could be people using React Router for their website.
Mazen Chami:
I'm disappointed to not see the one that I started my React native career with React Native Router Flux, it's no
Robin Heinze:
Man. Same here. We were React Native Router Flux people too.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, yeah.
Mazen Chami:
Well, it was just a wrap around I think React navigation,
Robin Heinze:
Not even on the list anymore
Jamon Holmgren:
Technically. How many people in the audience have never heard of React Native Router Flux? Probably a majority have not even heard of it
Mazen Chami:
Because React navigation,
Robin Heinze:
It was the choice. It was the only choice. And then React navigation, I remember when it came out and it was a big deal.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, that's right. Technologies with less than 10% awareness are not included.
Mazen Chami:
That's probably where it is. Well,
Jamon Holmgren:
There you go. Now Evan Bacon, who of course is the maintainer and creator of Expo Router, gave the blurb at the bottom of the navigation section, so go check that out. For Evan's thoughts, I wanted to take a look at the graphics and animation side of things because this one tends to be something that is, I don't know, it's just a popular topic. People like talking about animations. That's kind of the fun part of it. Looks
Robin Heinze:
Like a lot of them saw some improvements. I
Mazen Chami:
Think everyone, every single one of them went up in usage, but pretty much kind of stayed the same
Robin Heinze:
React. Native Skia had a big jump.
Mazen Chami:
That was probably the biggest mover between the year with React native and Reanimated by software mentioned. It's kind of at the
Robin Heinze:
Top. Maybe it's an indication that more people are just incorporating animations into their apps
Jamon Holmgren:
In general. That's what I'm wondering. But the behemoth here is definitely reanimated, 86%. Everybody uses Reanimated because it's really good.
Robin Heinze:
It is. It really, it's
Mazen Chami:
Really very performant. It's also interesting to see the React native animated API go from 77 to 81%
Jamon Holmgren:
And that's the one that's built in.
Mazen Chami:
That's the built in one. Yeah, and I don't remember hearing or reading of any updates to it as far as performance goes. I know between 22 and 23, reanimated had the jump to V three and V three was a big rewrite and I believe V three was also getting new architecture compatible, so they had some really cool updates to it. Yeah,
Jamon Holmgren:
We had shish stuff on React native radio talking about React native reanimated. Yeah,
Mazen Chami:
Exactly.
Jamon Holmgren:
Before it came out. Yep,
Mazen Chami:
Exactly. Yeah, so that's interesting to see the core React native animated kind of get more love from the community. Yeah,
Jamon Holmgren:
Absolutely. And it kind of goes down from there. We've got Lottie, which actually has 64% usage. I didn't realize so many people use Lottie. Skia made a big jump up to 27% Modi, three Js React, native Animatable fiber and Expo gl. They all made a little bit of improvement in their usage, which is pretty
Robin Heinze:
Cool. More animations overall,
Jamon Holmgren:
Debugging and profiling. Now we need more tools here, so this is a fun one and we have,
Robin Heinze:
I love the one that's top. That makes me happy.
Jamon Holmgren:
I know. Don't spoil it yet. We have some plans to make more episodes about debugging. We did one about the dev menu, which I think is a really good episode. You should go listen to it, but there's a lot of stuff on here that we need to do actual React native of radio episodes about. But without further ado, what's number one on the debugging tools?
Robin Heinze:
My favorite console logs.
Jamon Holmgren:
Console logs.
Robin Heinze:
53% say the use con, but I mean who doesn't At least I'm
Jamon Holmgren:
No, no, it's 75%. Sorry, I had it on the wrong tab here.
Robin Heinze:
Percent. That just means you can pick more than one, I'm assuming. Yeah. Yes,
Jamon Holmgren:
That's
Mazen Chami:
Right. I'm proud to say that I did check this box and I'm also proud to say that right before coming on to record, I did open a poll request that adds a console warning to one of our open source packages. So here we are.
Jamon Holmgren:
You're doing
Mazen Chami:
Your part. I'm doing my
Robin Heinze:
Part to community. You can't go wrong.
Mazen Chami:
Exactly. We need
Robin Heinze:
Log. You can go. It's classic. It's just like fundamental debugging methodology is putting log statements in. Now are there additional tools beyond that that you should know how to use? Yes, but you should learn console log debugging first.
Jamon Holmgren:
So even though Flipper has been more or less, I wouldn't say deprecated, but kind of gone away from, it's still at number two at 52% and then we have the in browser Chrome dev tools is 51% and then there's expos, Chrome Dev tools 40.
Robin Heinze:
The fact that there are almost, there are three different versions of Chrome dev tools on this list should tell you kind of what the problem is with debugging right now.
Jamon Holmgren:
Now this one is good native debugging using Xcode or Android Studio 37%. I think that's actually a pretty good one to have in your toolbox, knowing how to use X Code's, debugging and Android studios as well. And then there's the React native debugger, which is I think, and the React dev tools. I think this is going to change in the next, yeah,
Robin Heinze:
I am so curious to see the 2024 version of this
Jamon Holmgren:
Now at the bottom, but still pretty strong.
Robin Heinze:
15% we need the
Jamon Holmgren:
List is React Deron, and if you haven't tried React Deron, you need to go check it out. That's something we maintain here at Infinite Red. We haven't really promoted it a lot. I think why a lot of people haven't used it, but React 2 62 of you is Beloved. Is beloved by 15% of you, so go check it out. It's free. Just search for React Deron and you'll find it. Alright, there's some other interesting questions here. What problems do you run into in general? What features do you use? The console log, I guess the console panel, network panel and things like that.
Mazen Chami:
Yeah, there's a lot of information on here. I would recommend people looking at it and I think one person that's probably, hopefully they're listening to this episode and cringing at my message about console log, Cedric, VIN Finn. He's mentioned multiple times how we should stop using console log, but I apologize, Cedric.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, he came and gave a little talk to our team actually, which was awesome and gave us his opinions about the debugger Cedric's. Fantastic, fantastic engineer works for Expo and go check out his blurb at the bottom of the debugging profiling section. Alright, next we have React native tools. What does that mean? Well, the React native community, CLI and Expo CLI Ignite EAS. So basically different command line tools essentially is what? This is number one. Actually the Expo CLI took over number one, this is kind of a big deal where the React native community CLI in 2022 dominated with 87% that dropped to 61% and Expo went from 69% up to 72%, so it took over number one.
Robin Heinze:
I'm surprised also to see still 71% of people using Expo go.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, well I use it all the time for little demo apps for debugging things, stuff where I don't need the native access, I just spin up a new expo Go app. I've probably created more expo go apps than every other type of mobile app combined
Mazen Chami:
Expo
Jamon Holmgren:
Snack. Then there's snacks which are going up as well. So there's a lot of expo here and the upgrade helper apparently was not in the original survey, but it comes in at 56%. That's actually lower than I thought it'd be. Upgrade Helper tends to be pretty cool, but I guess if you're using Expo, you don't need it. And then Ignite is at 12%. So again, making the list doing our part, well that's
Mazen Chami:
1% more than the previous year. Take that.
Jamon Holmgren:
That is true. Yeah, slowly growing a bit and it also, so Ignite is one of those things that you'll use, but then you don't necessarily use it again after you've used it spin up your app. There are some tools that let you do that, but you don't have to. So because of that 12%, I'll take that. That's pretty good. It is the most popular third party, not Expo, not Meta, not React native CLI, third party Boiler play and CLI in the ecosystem, which is cool. And then there's RNX kit and the React native test app, which is mostly used by people who are building libraries are contributing to React native itself. And that 8% actually lines up with native contributors, so that might be part of it
Robin Heinze:
There. There's a lot of really, really good charts on the rest of this page.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, a lot of good information here. Colin Gray, who's a good friend of mine, I've known him for over 10 years. He was on
Robin Heinze:
The show
Jamon Holmgren:
Rec Native radio. Yeah,
Robin Heinze:
Yeah. He also was a speaker atc his episode. Yeah, we're good friends with
Jamon Holmgren:
Colin. Yeah, fantastic guy. He works at Shopify and he talks a lot about the different tools here like Expo and whatnot, and he mentions Orbit, so go check out Orbit.
Mazen Chami:
I tweeted about Orbit recently. It's a very expo orbit tool. It's the expo tool. It basically gets rid of you needing to go to the expo dev dashboard in your browser and it just creates a, what's it called? An icon on the top of your
Jamon Holmgren:
Menu, menu bar icon,
Robin Heinze:
Right. ites the question of how do I open my simulator again? Exactly. Yeah. That Xcode makes it surprisingly difficult to open a simulator if it's not open.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah.
Mazen Chami:
The next section is pretty interesting. JavaScript, TypeScript balance.
Robin Heinze:
Well, because it's It's a scale. A scale from, oh,
Jamon Holmgren:
Okay. Yeah,
Mazen Chami:
Yeah. The next section,
Jamon Holmgren:
Yeah, this is interesting. JavaScript, TypeScript balance between a hundred percent JavaScript to a hundred percent TypeScript, and then everything in between,
Robin Heinze:
The majority are on a hundred percent TypeScript.
Mazen Chami:
Yeah, it's leaning towards that aspect of it. I think
Jamon Holmgren:
58.6%,
Robin Heinze:
Hundred percent. Anytime I have to go back and use plain JavaScript, it's painful.
Jamon Holmgren:
I guarantee you this 18.4% is like, oh, my configuration file is not in TypeScript, so I'm going to mark the 90% instead of a hundred percent. It's always the
Robin Heinze:
Pedantic programmer thing to do.
Jamon Holmgren:
Exactly. Just to add those two things down.
Mazen Chami:
They went on their GitHub for their project and saw what, right?
Robin Heinze:
They literally
Mazen Chami:
Look at the was and they went for that. Yeah, I could see that.
Jamon Holmgren:
They're like, no, I have some image files too. 50%, 50 50 was actually 5%. That's an interesting one. And then yeah, 5% just said a hundred percent JavaScript. Get rid of this TypeScript. We don't
Robin Heinze:
Want it. The people who are at 50 50 are on their way to a hundred. They're just not there.
Jamon Holmgren:
One would, one would hope next year. Yeah, package managers. This one's fun. So yarn still top dog here with 72% NPM, just Bear NPM is 55%. And then we've got the three other options, which are PP
Robin Heinze:
14% are already using Bun Yard version two.
Mazen Chami:
Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Jamon Holmgren:
Already 15% bun's. Pretty
Mazen Chami:
Cool. That's great adoption.
Robin Heinze:
Oh, go listen to our BUN puns. Yeah, from our BUN episode. The
Jamon Holmgren:
BUN episode is good and it's my opinion that you should be using BUN for a package manager. Maybe not as a runtime yet, but as a package manager, it's just awesome starter templates. So we have Create Expo app, no surprise there. React native in it, create React native app. And then our own Ignite CLI comes in as at fourth, and then there's create T three Turbo, which is Theo's thing that supports React native. I expect Dan OVS create Expo Stack to show up next year because one that has been kind of coming onto the scene more recently, and I think you can use that to actually create an Ignite app as well. It will reach out to Ignite CLI under the hood and do that, so that's pretty cool.
Robin Heinze:
We have to mention we're getting pretty long, but have to mention the resources page because it features none other than the React Native Radio podcasts, which were very excited about.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yes, totally. So if you scroll down to podcasts and go to percentage of question respondents, react Native Radio by Infinite Red, 71.5%. Thank you all for making us.
Robin Heinze:
Thank you for taking the survey
Jamon Holmgren:
React native podcast out there. Then of course the React Native Show podcast by Call Stack, which we've done a collaboration with. Those folks are fantastic. Go check them out as well. And then Simon Grim has created a rocket ship and he has been putting out some really good content. He is third, we also have Syntax, which is not specifically a React native podcast, but people listen to it for React native content. The Change log similar and Pod Rocker by Log Rocket is the lowest one on the list there with 10%. But yep, 71.5% of people who responded chose React Native Radio. However, not very many people listen to podcasts. It's about 24% of the developers. So that is something to keep in mind. Those of you who listen to the podcast are well ahead of everybody else.
Robin Heinze:
There's also a familiar name under video creators, I don't know. That's
Jamon Holmgren:
Right. Yeah, I showed up.
Robin Heinze:
I mean, code Quest, I'm not going to try and claim that the seven people are not all from Infinite Red, but
Mazen Chami:
So that's your answer. There's your answer. Only seven people from IR filled the survey out.
Jamon Holmgren:
No, I know that a lot of people at IR don't watch my videos. Well, there you go. Seven people do.
Yes, I appreciate those seven people who said that they watch my videos. I should put out more videos, but been a little busy. So the very top was William Can Dillon, who does some really great content. We have Theo as number two, Simon Grim again coming in. Kaline, who is an awesome dude, love Kaline. I have actually love cata. I've actually hung out with him quite a bit at conferences. He's such a fun guy. And then Vadim and Primo Gen Fire Ship who does a little bit of React native content, but Fire Ship is arguably the top developer YouTuber out there. And then there's a few others as well. Jack Harrington who came to Chain React. I was
Robin Heinze:
Happy to see Matt Pocock on the list.
Jamon Holmgren:
Oh yeah, Matt Pocock. I'm surprised
Robin Heinze:
He's not hired. He has some really great TypeScript
Jamon Holmgren:
Content he does. He just doesn't talk about React native all that often. And then on the people side, number one, Evan Bacon, that's well deserved, who people follow for React native news. Evan is of course a wealth of React native content and knowledge. And then a surprise number two, which I love. Mark Avi, our good friend Mark, he came in at number two with 6.3% and then William again, number three. Number four, I don't know why anybody would put this guy, but Jamon, hol,
Robin Heinze:
Jamon, Holmgren, that guy. Yeah, I think I've heard of him.
Jamon Holmgren:
Few people I guess checked it by mistake. And then Fernando Royo also there. Catalina again, Theo again. Lorenzo. Lorenzo showed up on this list, which is cool. Not just Dev,
Robin Heinze:
Lots of familiar names.
Jamon Holmgren:
Cedric, Cedric von Putin, we've already talked about him. Brent Ney of course from Expo. And then Christophe,
Robin Heinze:
Christophe, Sebastian Lorber, Matt Cock again,
Jamon Holmgren:
Lots of good stuff. Last one I really want talk about is whether React native is moving in the right direction or not. And last time we had agree strongly at 25% agree at 57% and then 15% neutral, et cetera. All of those numbers got better. So agree strongly went up to 32% agree, 53% neutral, 11.9% disagree, 2.3 and only 0.3% said disagree strongly. Those were the 0.3% of survey respondents who were Fluter developers who came in to click the buttons, the Mess, our survey. And there's other really cool stuff in there
Robin Heinze:
Going in the right direction.
Jamon Holmgren:
Yes, absolutely. So we need to wrap this up. Go check out the survey. So much good stuff here. Sorry to our editors for how long we went on this one.
Robin Heinze:
There's a line from the conclusion I want to highlight because it really sums it all up, which is that the current state of React native is stable, but definitely not boring. I
Jamon Holmgren:
Love it. So stable, not
Robin Heinze:
Boring. I can't wait for the 2024 survey. I love this framework and this community. So great. Thanks for listening. Yeah,
Jamon Holmgren:
Thanks everybody. We'll see you all next time.
Jed Bartausky:
As always, thanks to our production team with editor Todd Werth, our assistant editor and episode release coordinator. Yours truly, Jed Bartausky, our director of marketing, Justin Huskey and our guest coordinator, Derek Greenberg. Our producer and host is Jamon Holmgren and executive producers and hosts are Robin Heinze and Mazen Chami. Thanks to our sponsor, Infinite Red. Check us out at Infinite Red slash React native. A special thanks to all of you listening today. Make sure to subscribe to React Native Radio wherever you get your podcasts.