Over 500 attendees filled The Armory in Portland, OR to hear from some of the more prominent and upcoming community members in the growing world of React Native. The Chain React conference brought together core React Native contributors, engineers writing their first react-native init, and everyone in between. This combination facilitated excellent knowledge transfer, feedback, and healthy conversations about the framework’s past, present and future.
Over two days, every major topic related to React Native development was covered in depth. Here are some notable talks covering concepts we deal with in React Native everyday (in no particular order):
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From Zero to DevOps by Parashuram Narasimhan @nparashuram
It’s one thing to write your JavaScript, Objective-C, Swift and Java when building a React Native application. The second part of the developer experience involves distribution, analytics, testing, and much more. Visual Studio App Center is shaping up to be the perfect suite of tooling when building your next React Native app.
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When to Go Native Over JavaScript by Harry Tormey @htormey
The promise of writing JavaScript and having a true native application sounds extremely gratifying. Generally you will write most of your React Native application using only JavaScript. However, there are times that require you to write a bit of code in your target’s native language. An example would be if you would like to execute some logic while the app may be in the background. Harry discussed some of these scenarios and how one would approach them.
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React as a Platform: A path towards a truly cross-platform UI by Leland Richardson @intelligibabble
If I had a nickel for every time someone mentions “write once, run anywhere”… This pipe dream has been previously attempted several times and failed for all sorts of reasons. However, with React’s architecture, ecosystem, and community, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel to share a portion of your UI code across any platform.
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From Idea to App Store: A Guide to Shipping React Native Apps by Chris Ball @cball_
The process of taking an app all the way to the Apple App StoreⓇ and Google Play Store is not for the faint of heart. Fortunately, Chris walked us through many of the pitfalls and provided some excellent suggestions on tooling and best practices to make life a little bit easier.
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Breaking Down React Native Bridging by Peggy Rayzis @peggyrayzis
The bridge is one of the most overlooked yet most critical parts of React Native. It is the secret sauce and should be given far more attention by developers getting into React Native than it gets. Understanding how it works and what goes on behind the scenes is crucial for writing high-performing applications.
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React Native + ES.next = ❤ by Ben Ilegbodu @benmvp
When React Native switched over from jstransform to babel, a whole new world opened up for developers. We were able to use all the “cool” new things found in the world of JavaScript. The new ECMAScript specifications and some of their proposals enable us to do more in our code with less. Ben gave excellent insight into many of the more popular language constructs used today, highlighting their benefits and drawbacks.
In conclusion, I’d like to give a special thank you to Infinite Red for putting on a truly excellent conference. The entire conference was executed flawlessly, from the food to the Wi-Fi (most important). The team was extremely accommodating and helped facilitate any of our requests.
For those who stopped by the Modus Create booth, we hope you enjoyed the giveaways and conversations!
