A bit about NativeScript

If you're unaware, NativeScript is a framework that allows you to develop native iOS/Android apps with your favorite web framework. In simple terms, it's React Native, but you can use Angular. I started using NativeScript at work around July of 2020, though it had been on our radar for significantly longer.

Overall, I'm a big fan of the framework. That said, while I'm often singing its praises, there have been plenty of times when it's caused me to walk away from my desk for a while out of frustration (but hey, as a developer working from home, it's probably for the best that I get up and walk around more).

NativeScript benefits from a moderately sized plugin ecosystem, for which a lot of credit should go to Eddy Verbruggen, a developer who has written dozens of plugins for NativeScript. Enabling features such as Google auth, calendar access, NFC, augmented reality, and much more, odds are most NS apps are using at least one of his projects. He's prolific, and I'm in his debt for his excellent Firebase plugin, among others. Other plugins have been absorbed under the @nativescript-community tag, including an excellent implementation of Material components.

Is NativeScript perfect? No. Not even a little. Like I said, it's left me pulling my hair out on multiple occasions. Should you use it in your own projects? Well, it depends. It took multiple months for my team to really figure it out, to feel like we had a firm grasp on the framework and that we were capable of making great things with it. I'll likely get into the details of some of the issues I experienced in a future post, but to sum it all up, the framework needs time to mature before it's ready to go head to head with React Native, at least for the vast majority of applications.