Difference b/w React Typescript , React JavaScript and React Native?

Question

I have confusion about React JavaScript , React Typescript and React Native.

I just have idea that we use React Native for mobile applications and and React (Javascript,Typescript) for web applications.

Can someone exactly draw the difference between them ? Which parent library/framework those use ?

Like Angular can we make components,services in them(React JavaScript , React Typescript and React Native).

And when we simply say React what does it mean (Native , Typescript or Javascript) ?

Answer 1

React is a library/framework for building UIs. You construct various components that describe what you want the page to look like, and then react handles figuring out what changed and making updates to the page. If someone just says "react" without any other context, this is probably what they mean.

React Native uses the same core functionality as react, but once it has figured out the changes that need to be made, rather than update the dom (ie, the webpage), it updates native components for android or ios. React native thus lets you write native phone apps, using the syntax and tools that are familiar to react developers.

Javascript vs typescript is completely different axis. They can be used with react, but they are unrelated to react. Javascript is the main programming language used by webpages. Typescript is a superset of javascript, which lets you add type information to your code. This then lets you find bugs in your code quicker, because your IDE and build process can check the types to see if you've made mistakes.

Answer 2

Before going into the difference between React JS and React TS, you have to understand how React TS projects, in fact any TS project, actually works.

TypeScript is not a language that runs natively on the web. The typings that you add to your codebase don't have any meaning on the browser. When you build your code, your TypeScript code gets transpiled to JavaScript. So if you look at the bundled code, you can't find any difference between React JS and React TS, they bundle the same JavaScript code.

With that out of the way, let's talk about React Native and React. React, on its own, is a framework to build applications declaratively with components. When people refer to React while building a web app, they often just say React but they should instead say React and React-DOM because React-DOM is the library that actually renders to the browser.

You can think of React as the foundations of the React ecosystem. React-DOM is the library that builds on React to render your applications on the web. React Native is the library that renders your application on mobile apps and even more (MacOS, Windows, Apple TV and so on are also possible compile targets for React Native). I suggest you read React Native documentation to learn more about how it does this. I've personally used the Expo Managed Workflow to develop cross-platform mobile apps.

The difference between doing React JS and React TS is the language you write. You write JavaScript or TypeScript, but at the end of the day the bundle is always JavaScript (Note: Deno is different, it natively runs TypeScript, check it out).

And the difference between writing Javascript and Typescript is only the developer experience. When you write Typescript, you get static type-checking and incredible autocompletion. I always write Typescript because it finds most mistakes I make before I get a chance to even run my code. The downside to this is that, when I use libraries that don't have typings, I have to deal with that on my own (either write typings myself or use something else).