21–30 of 136 posts
Made a relatively complex React Native app last year, and gained a lot of perspective on it. I don't think Airbnb made a bad choice at the time they did it. They tried embracing a technology that was at the time half baked. When you are operating at the scale of Airbnb where there are lots of engineering hurdles and a high quality bar, it's challenging to absorb nascent tech. Since then a couple things have happened:…
Weird title. The correct English would be "Why did Airbnb dump React Native?". All of the sub-headings have this strange construction as well. Is this 'correct' in some other country and I'm just not aware of it? I was gonna say, it's also weird because the text of the article seems nearly-native quality.. but actually when I went back and looked more closely it's semi-broken English as well. I guess it's in big word…
Merriam-Webster shows plenty of examples of usage at the top https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dump "He dumped his clothes on the bed. She dumped the contents of her purse on the table. I dumped the old coffee down the drain."
Correct: He dumped his clothes on the bed.
Incorrect: Why he dumped his clothes on the bed?
Correct: Why did he dump his clothes on the bed?
Airbnb switched away from React Native at a time when a lot of other high-profile companies did as well and wrote technical blog articles about it. Discord was one of the few dissenters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619609 Looks like they're doubling-down further still: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32310392 Looks like Shopify also picked up RN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22181873
Seems strange to write an article about why they switched without mentioning one of the main technical reasons Airbnb said themselves: > Many of the difficulties we encountered were due to the hybrid model approach we took They had about 220 screens in RN, 880 native screens total. They found it difficult to juggle that, essentially developing 3 platforms instead of 2. Personally I prefer to do pure RN, with native e…
That always surprised me a bit, because part of the initial intent of react native was to be hybrid. Facebook had a lot of php developers that they wanted to enable to be able to write mobile screens. Not the core experiences, which you wanted dedicated mobile folks to write native for performance/transitions, but secondary things like the reporting flow. But it probably takes a dedicated developer focused team to ma…
Generally a small team is going to do pure RN, with limited extensions and views. A larger team you really have to know how to split everyone up while still being able to bridge views simply.
JS triggered animations and other native features are performant now via JSI, nowadays most people use react-native-reanimated to achieve this.
I think most of the issues Airbnb had were growing pains of RN and have long been resolved.
This seems to mostly rephrase things from Airbnbs engineering blog at the time? https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/react-native-at-airbnb... (part 1 of 5)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Merriam-Webster shows plenty of examples of usage at the top https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dump "He dumped his clothes on the bed. She dumped the contents of her purse on the table. I dumped the old coffee down the drain."
Dumped as word isn't the incorrect English. The formation of the question is the incorrect English. Correct: He dumped his clothes on the bed. Incorrect: Why he dumped his clothes on the bed? Correct: Why did he dump his clothes on the bed?
Airbnb switched away from React Native at a time when a lot of other high-profile companies did as well and wrote technical blog articles about it. Discord was one of the few dissenters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619609 Looks like they're doubling-down further still: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32310392 Looks like Shopify also picked up RN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22181873
I sometimes wonder if all these independent companies who appear to make coordinated technical decisions are just hitting the same frustrations at the same time, or if engineers just read each other's blogs and and then pitch the blog ideas at their meetings. And then write a blog about it, which other engineers at other companies read and pitch at their meeting. So basically it becomes a self-perpetuating meme.
But I am more of a writer and decisions are driven by fashion
Airbnb switched away from React Native at a time when a lot of other high-profile companies did as well and wrote technical blog articles about it. Discord was one of the few dissenters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619609 Looks like they're doubling-down further still: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32310392 Looks like Shopify also picked up RN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22181873
I sometimes wonder if all these independent companies who appear to make coordinated technical decisions are just hitting the same frustrations at the same time, or if engineers just read each other's blogs and and then pitch the blog ideas at their meetings. And then write a blog about it, which other engineers at other companies read and pitch at their meeting. So basically it becomes a self-perpetuating meme.
Sometimes many people in different places have had concerns, or ideas for a better way forward, for some time but have either but spoken up or have had the "everyone else seems to be dealing with it" reaction.
In such cases it takes a certain critical mass of information supporting the change to get movement, that critical mass builds slowly but once it is reached the immediate reaction can appear explosive, and there are sometimes aftershocks back & forth, much like an earthquake caused by plate movement.
So while there is some self fulfilling chain reaction feeding into it, there is usually some true need involved for a lot of the teams concerned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dumped as word isn't the incorrect English. The formation of the question is the incorrect English. Correct: He dumped his clothes on the bed. Incorrect: Why he dumped his clothes on the bed? Correct: Why did he dump his clothes on the bed?
Another fix that could make the title correct is getting rid of the question mark. Then it just becomes a statement of "Why airbnb dumped RN."