React Native's re-architecture in 2020

How it will dramatically improve apps performance

React Native was first introduced in 2015 as a solution for developing cross-platform applications with native capabilities using the ReactJS framework. The original design of the platform did not come without its set of flaws and drawbacks, despite the solution gaining strong community support and seeing gradual increase in popularity due to the fame of its Web counterpart.

Originally announced in 2018, the React Native re-architecture is an undergoing effort by the Facebook team to make the platform more robust and address some of the most common issues brought by developers over the years. We'll take a look on how this re-architecture will affect and improve both app performance and development velocity.

The old architecture

In essence, React Native aims to be a platform-agnostic solution. To that extent, the framework's main goal is to allow developers to write Javascript React code while, under the hood, React Native can deploy its mechanisms to transcribe the React reconciliation tree into something interpretable by whatever is the native infrastructure. This means:

• Displaying the UI correctly
• Accessing native capabilities