Imagine writing code once and running it seamlessly on iOS, Android, web, and desktop. That’s the vision of Write Once, Run Anywhere (WORA), a development approach that promises efficiency, speed, and consistency across platforms. But does it live up to the hype?
In this deep dive, we’ll explore WORA’s benefits, challenges, and practical implementation, with a special focus on React Native and React Native Web.
What Is Write Once, Run Anywhere (WORA)?
WORA is a software development strategy that enables code to be written once and deployed across multiple platforms. While similar to cross-platform development, which typically covers only iOS and Android, WORA extends beyond mobile, often including web, Windows, and Mac applications.
Popular WORA Technologies
Several frameworks attempt to make WORA a reality:
- React Native with React Native Web
- React Native with Expo
- Flutter (Dart-based, by Google)
- Kotlin Multi-Platform (KMP) – Stable since 2023
- Ionic – Supports Angular, React, and Vue
These tools aim to maximize code reusability while minimizing platform-specific customization.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of WORA
While WORA sounds great in theory, real-world implementation is a different story. Let’s break down the pros, cons, and unexpected hurdles developers face.
The Good: Speed, Scalability, and Consistency
- Faster Time to Market – Develop once, deploy everywhere.
- Consistent UI/UX – Users get a uniform experience across devices.
- Larger Developer Pool – React Native’s foundation in JavaScript and React makes it easier to train web developers for mobile.
- Extensive Library Support – JavaScript-based frameworks allow access to thousands of NPM packages.
The Bad: Platform-Specific Workarounds
- Not Everything Can Be Shared – UI and platform-specific code often require custom handling.
- CSS and Flexbox Behaviors Differ – What works on web may not work natively (and vice versa).
- Accessibility Issues – React Native Web has known accessibility shortcomings.
- Bundling Complexity – Multiple bundlers (Metro for mobile, Webpack/Vite for web) are often required.
The Ugly: Compromises and Limitations
- Web Suffers the Most – By using a mobile-first approach, web experiences lose out on:
- CSS Grid and tables
- Media queries
- Advanced styling techniques
- Many React ecosystem libraries
- Tailwind CSS
- React theming libraries
This results in web layouts that feel like mobile apps, often failing to leverage the full screen space available.
2. Native Challenges – While React Native allows creating native modules for missing functionality, doing so complicates WORA development because you must now support both native and web environments.
3. Library Compatibility Issues – Not all React Native libraries work on web. For example:
yarn add react-native-date-picker
This package breaks web builds, requiring developers to either replace the library or implement platform-specific code.
When encountering such issues, developers have a few options:
- Find a cross-platform compatible library (not always possible).
- Use package.json imports and pre-compile modules per platform.
- Use lazy imports and dynamically load components at runtime.
Each approach has trade-offs, and choosing the right strategy depends on project complexity and team expertise.
Is WORA Unusable? Not Exactly.
Given the challenges, does WORA still have value? The answer depends on how it’s implemented.
Rather than aiming for a 100% shared codebase, the better approach is to focus on sharing specific components while allowing flexibility for platform-specific optimizations.
For example:
- Reusable UI components (when the same pattern works across platforms).
- Shared logic for state management, API calls, and data validation.
- A consistent theme system across platforms.
Strategies for Sharing Code Without WORA’s Pitfalls
Since full WORA adoption often leads to compromises, an alternative is to focus on sharing only the right parts of the codebase.
- Shared JavaScript Libraries for Integrations and Data Management
Some JavaScript libraries work seamlessly across both React and React Native, making them ideal for shared logic:
- TanStack React Query (API calls & caching)
- Axios (HTTP requests)
- Zustand (State management)
- React-native-mmkv (Storage)
- React-i18next (Internationalization)
- React-hook-form (Forms & validation)
- Yup/Zod (Validation schemas)
2. Structuring Code for Maximum Reuse
- API calls, validation logic, and state management should be in shared hooks.
- TypeScript type definitions ensure consistency across platforms.
- React Query for caching and API fetching eliminates redundancy.
3. Leveraging Reusable API Handling
Using Axios with React Query ensures data-fetching logic is centralized and consistent across platforms.
4. API Caching and State Management
React Query allows developers to fine-tune cache expiration and data-fetching logic, preventing redundant API calls.
5. Shared Form Validation & Handling
A major advantage of shared logic is consistent form validation and submission handling.
By combining React Hook Form with React Query, developers can create forms that work across platforms while maintaining validation consistency.
6. Persistent State Management Across Platforms
Using Zustand with React-native-mmkv, developers can persist state efficiently, even when transitioning between web and native applications.
A Smarter Approach to Cross-Platform Development
While the “Write Once, Run Anywhere” concept is attractive, blindly forcing a single codebase across all platforms often leads to performance bottlenecks, poor user experience, and compatibility headaches.
The better alternative? Strategic code sharing.
- Reuse API integrations, validation logic, and state management.
- Allow platform-specific optimizations for UI/UX.
- Use shared libraries that work across React & React Native.
At RBA, we help companies architect scalable, maintainable, and efficient multi-platform solutions. Whether you need React Native optimization, API unification, or a modern application strategy, our experts can guide you to the best approach.
Let’s build something powerful.