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Transition to React Native

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: Transition to React Native

#71

Post by raspasov »

ryndshn wrote: post #66
raspasov wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done and ran 2 medium sized apps on both iOS and Android and have never ran into such problems. While not impossible, that's akin to saying that if you run the JVM on MacOS vs Linux, there's a chance of different behavior. Possible, but unlikely. It shouldn't be a show-stopper for most situation.

ehh, not really. JVMs are all developed under the same roof but JS engines are a little more distributed and the spec has a little more room for interpretation. i agree it's unlikely, but still not ideal

Yes, fair enough. Not a perfect analogy.

Re: Transition to React Native

#72

Post by EvilEy3 »

What an attrocity.

You could've just said that you no longer want to invest in mobile talent.

Just opened Coinbase Android app: * Overall slow * Jank in transitions * When dialog pops up and you close it, there's a dangling shadow in the air * You open privacy policy and application is killed in background and you see splash screen again with no state restoration, what the f?

Hot garbage, the time you spent on this could be spent on rewriting to proper native standards.

Re: Transition to React Native

#73

Post by EvilEy3 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #39

Many comments here are comparing this transition to the one Airbnb did a few years back. These two transitions could not be more different. Coinbase decided to greenfield their new apps, Airbnb (attempted) to brownfield it. I've worked with a number of clients that have gone down the same path that Airbnb did, from a business perspective it makes perfect sense, keep what you have and slowly move over, but the technic…

> Hot reloading either barely works or not at all, load up times increase exponentially,

It works like this even on hello world apps.

The only platform where Hot Reload works reliably on mobile is Flutter.

Re: Transition to React Native

#74

Post by EvilEy3 »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #27

I'm skeptical of most "we switched from X to Y" posts, but the thought process here seems pretty solid. * They had a much harder time hiring mobile developers than web developers, and per-person productivity was also lower * They prototyped an app before committing to a new technology * Similarly, they tested a change to the existing app before switching * They specifically invested time to cross-train people, and te…

> They had a much harder time hiring mobile developers than web developers, and per-person productivity was also lower

That's what happens when you pay peanuts.

Re: Transition to React Native

#75

Post by EvilEy3 »

ec109685 wrote: post #21
kumarm wrote: post #9

2025: Coinbase successful transition from React Native to Native apps. Seriously haven't we seen how this play-out way too many times already? There is absolutely no incentive for Apple and Google to make sure ReactNative controlled by Facebook is the way to develop apps for their platforms. Till that is true, its absolutely nuts for any company other than facebook to develop their apps in ReactNative. Edit: Example:…

They addressed Airbnb's experience in the blog post. In addition to abandoning React Native, Airbnb created their own templating language best suited for their app and rolled it out to both platforms so they didn't have to handspin every screen.

No, they didn't address anything. They only said that it didn't work for Airbnb because it wasn't greenfield. The real reason it doesn't work out, is because React Native is a dumpster fire. If you really want to go cross platform way, then go with Flutter or wait for JetBrains Compose to target iOS.

Re: Transition to React Native

#76

Post by EvilEy3 »

codingslave wrote: post #10
kumarm wrote: post #9

2025: Coinbase successful transition from React Native to Native apps. Seriously haven't we seen how this play-out way too many times already? There is absolutely no incentive for Apple and Google to make sure ReactNative controlled by Facebook is the way to develop apps for their platforms. Till that is true, its absolutely nuts for any company other than facebook to develop their apps in ReactNative. Edit: Example:…

React native is just better, and it has been for years.

Better than what?

Re: Transition to React Native

#77

Post by _fat_santa »

jfisk87 wrote: post #56

Long story short, terrible idea unless you're in a position like coinbase. The article is from a high level engineering standpoint about productivity and trying to be efficient. The thing the article doesn't mention is the best react native developer also is an expert in native mobile development. It is crazy hard finding these people. All techno fluff aside, any component mobile developer knows once you have a solid…

I highly disagree that an expert RN dev also needs to be an expert mobile dev. Articles like these make it seem that react native development requires native knowledge but that simply isn’t the case. With almost all greenfield RN apps, 99.9% of the code is RN and only very specific feature are helped out by native code.

Re: Transition to React Native

#79

Post by _fat_santa »

macando wrote: post #57
dstaley wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If at all possible, I can't recommend Expo enough. I hated building RN apps prior to it, and now I hate building apps without it.

When Expo works like it should it's like the best dev experience ever. Supporting all React Native 3rd party components without ejecting and ditching the Expo app will be a huge step forward.

Expo is great for prototyping and small apps with limited scope. However anything bigger and expo just doesn’t work. At some point you will need to mess with the native side of thing, most of the time to initialize things like Firebase or adding a lib with a bridge. When you have to make native changes, no matter how small, Expo will get majorly in the way

Re: Transition to React Native

#80

Post by EvilEy3 »

ec109685 wrote: post #18
ardit33 wrote: post #12

Two years from now, it will be 'why did we decide to move on from React as it was not working out' blog post It is like the circle of life with native vs semi-native (which react is), and just html apps. Teams build a fast new version, looks great as it is new code, without much baggage, and over time it gets bloated and people complain that it takes too much to debug/develop on it. Some people in a internal team wri…

How utterly dismissive. They rebuilt their apps, increased the number of developers able to contribute to their codebase and improved metrics. That should be praised. Their point about brownfield development was a good one. In my experience the intersection between RN and Native (both code and people) is the biggest impediment.

You know what is dismissive? Switching to a lowest common denominator and offer subpar experience. This is what happens when you offer React Natives to users.

They dismissed advancements in native development and they'll pay the price the future.

It's literally laughable that they decided to transition to half dead tech when Compose and SwiftUI are ramping up.

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