Lynxjs vs React Native

As an avid user of React, it seems as though by association I should love React Native for mobile development. I mean, it's in the name. But I've found some limitations within React Native that always seem to remind me that I am not using pure React. Lynxjs has been eye-opening for me, as it has shown me what is possible with a pure React approach to mobile development.

With Lynxjs, the learning curve is fairly simple. One of the best features of Lynx is that it allows you to choose your own framework to mimic off of. It is possible to use React, Vue, Svelte, or if you are stuck in the early 2010s, Angular. You can even use specific tools natively, like tailwindcss, which is a must have for me, and isn't available in React Native (without 3rd party libraries, like nativewind).

Basic Lynx App

Take a look at this code snippet. This is a simple reactive window built with Lynx's idiomantic react approach. As you can tell just by looking, it is almost identical to React, with the differences being the import pathing and the use of "view" instead of "div", "text" instead of "p", etc.

I was able to go from nothing to a full mobile app in 2 weeks, and I never felt extremely challenged. It was a great development experience, even with the lack of support or built in features since it is so new.

One thing that I liked when learning Lynxjs was that it forced me to stay away from AI. Since it is so new, LLMs have no real data on Lynx just yet, so this forced me to read the docs, watch youtube videos, and problem solve on my own. This was so refreshing, since post pandemic, AI has become a crutch for my development and learning process, which I find has made it so that I am not truly learning the new tools I have tried to use.

All things considered, Lynx has been a great tool to learn and I highly recommend picking it up. It is a refreshing thing to learn and use and has shown me what is possible for mobile js frameworks.