What Is React Native?

React Native is an open source front end framework that is used to develop applications for the web, iOS, Android, and TV platforms.

History of React Native

React Native was initially released by a company called Meta Platforms Inc. The initial release was in March of 2015. It started when in 2012 Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that Facebook's biggest mistake as a company was betting too much on HTML as opposed to native. The mobile version of Facebook was built upon HTML5 which resulted in an unstable application. This led the developers at Facebook to work on React Native.

What Makes React Native Great?

React Native is great because historically to make a mobile application an entirely different set of skills was necessary. Before, to make a mobile application, a developer would need to know a programming language such as: Swift, Java, or C++. The developer might even have needed to create two separate codebases for the iOS and Android versions of an app. With React Native, there is not much of a learning curve from just plain React JS. A developer can go from a React JS background to React Native rather seamlessly and create a mobile application that works across numerous platfors.