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Introducing Lynx: ByteDance’s New Rust-Based JavaScript Framework
ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, has just launched a game-changing open-source framework called Lynx. This new multi-platform development tool aims to outperform existing solutions like React Native and Flutter by leveraging Rust-based tooling and a high-performance, dual-threaded UI rendering engine.
What Sets Lynx Apart?
Like React Native, Lynx enables web developers to build cross-platform mobile apps using JavaScript. However, it promises smoother, pixel-perfect UIs and faster launch times, potentially addressing some of the performance concerns that have plagued React Native for years.
Unlike React Native’s single-threaded JavaScript bridge, which can introduce performance bottlenecks, Lynx employs a dual-threaded architecture. The framework splits user code and framework code into two separate runtimes. The main thread, powered by PrimJS (built on QuickJS), manages synchronous UI tasks such as event handling, while user code runs independently on another thread. This separation ensures that inefficient user code does not block the main thread, resulting in instant first-frame rendering and eliminating blank screen delays.
