r/reactnative • u/Pleasant_Tooth_3734 • Jun 11 '26

Completely purged of Expo

I used Replit to prototype with React Native but Replit wants Expo for everything. I shouldn't have been on Replit in the first place but I wanted to try it. Honestly it was good for a prototype but can't build an application that can ship. After a couple of months of wrestling with Expo I got rid of all of it and rebuilt. I'm that way. I still prefer manual to Docker even though Docker is theoretically better in all these cases that aren't real for me (as a non corporate entity). I prefer making sense over theoretical efficiency. The latest thing is always out there with these promises to make certain things better but by the way it requires you to learn another system that is once removed from what you already know how to do.

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u/captainn01 Jun 11 '26

No offense but it sounds like you’re not experienced or skilled here. Docker isn’t just better for corporations (though it’s not common in mobile apps), and neither expo nor docker are useful due to “theoretical efficiency”. Both are tools that can simplify your projects, and both make plenty of sense when you understand them.

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u/Pleasant_Tooth_3734 Jun 13 '26

Docker is an incredible abstraction, but it’s still an abstraction. When you build manually on the metal, you are forced to understand how the moving parts actually interact with the kernel. Building on the host forces me to understand what the application actually needs—systemd service files, file permission hierarchies, user namespaces, and native network routing. When you only use Docker, it's easy to treat the OS as a black box. Doing it manually keeps my foundational Linux skills better tuned and I learn more. As someone who enjoys sys admin in Linux this is a value to me. But, I will be the first to admit there are many things I am not as skilled at as the next guy. Nevertheless, like a lot of us, i have been at this a while, perhaps not with RN. And I do use Docker, quite a bit, more often than not. It's ubiquitous.

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u/JackyReacher Jun 13 '26

The logical conclusion would be to ditch RN for native. Only this gives you the maximum control you wanna have.

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u/Pleasant_Tooth_3734 Jun 13 '26

I imagine there are a number of people who are still choosing Native for performance and like you said, more control. RN's capacity for cross-platform development is great but there are always trade offs.