Like myriad hybrid techniques, React Native is based on JavaScript. Unlike many other alternatives, though, it doesn't provide a cross-platform wrapper to access native functionality on devices.

React Native, developed by Facebook and released last year under an open source license, lets developers build a rich mobile user interface using JavaScript. It leverages the same fundamental UI ...

At first, Emscripten sounds like the punch line to a tech joke: a compiler that converts C/C++ code into Asm.js, a subset of JavaScript that can then run via a Web browser or in the Node.js framework.