> The existence of React Native is a huge difference-maker for react. If you want to sell your team on react, the ability for a frontend developer to easily handle mobile application development is a strong selling point.
The reality is that while it may ease the transition a bit, your front-end developer will be having to dip into Swift/Obj-C often enough that eventually the supposed benefits here are moot.
Personally I think it's worth just taking the hit and learning the framework. A good book will have you productive within a week. The learning curve these days is easier with Swift and now that front-end developers are used to things like React, Flex Box, and so on, the concepts behind making iOS apps are not as different and alien as they once were.
I can tell you, from experience building multiple apps in production from scratch, that that's not the case.
You practically never get to touch Obj-C or Java, and if you do it's usually to tweak a line or two in some third-party library which requires little to no knowledge of Obj-C or Java.
The reality is that while it may ease the transition a bit, your front-end developer will be having to dip into Swift/Obj-C often enough that eventually the supposed benefits here are moot.
Personally I think it's worth just taking the hit and learning the framework. A good book will have you productive within a week. The learning curve these days is easier with Swift and now that front-end developers are used to things like React, Flex Box, and so on, the concepts behind making iOS apps are not as different and alien as they once were.