Way faster. We are using a rails API and a React+Flux app as a front end. The whole setup time alone is a considerable pain. I feel that the JS tooling is still too fragmented and sometimes messy, but I&#x27;m probably biased by years of rails and iOS development.
Writing the app takes more time since you need to write everything from the ground up (e.g.: no Devise views to just style and forget), but I really hope that in the future the investment will pay. I wrote about it a while ago (although now we are using the more terse Alt implementation): <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fancypixel.github.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;28&#x2F;react-plus-flux-backed-by-rails-api&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fancypixel.github.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;28&#x2F;react-plus-flux-...</a>