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Why did Airbnb dump React Native? (2021)

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Re: Why did Airbnb dump React Native? (2021)

#61

Post by LAC-Tech »

breakfastduck wrote: post #59
LAC-Tech wrote: post #54

I don't mean to be too edgy here, but it has to be said. Why does anyone care what technology AirBnB uses for their mobile apps or websites? AirBnB is an incredibly successful company because of their marketing, ability to scale, and the fact they offered the right thing at the right time. Their website however, is slow and clunky. Their apps are slow and clunky. What about that side of their company is worth emulati…

I mean you've made the fantastic point for why people care already. People care especially if they feel a very successful business has slow and clunky apps. It's research. How did they end up in the position they're in? What good/bad decisions do they feel they made? Obviously it's interesting to people in the space. Where is anyone saying it's because they want to emulate it?

But my point is the success of airbnb clearly had very little to do with the quality of their mobile and web apps. It borders on irrelevant.

It'd be a bit like customer service people diving into how google does it because they're so successful. They are. But not because of their customer service.

Re: Why did Airbnb dump React Native? (2021)

#62

Post by solardev »

jjnoakes wrote: post #58
solardev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, in American (and I think British) English, it's common to add a word before the subject in a question. "Why Airbnb dumped RN" does not have to be a question. But when it is, American and British speakers expects an "auxiliary", I think it's called... from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93auxiliary_inve... "Sam enjoys the paper" is fine. "Sam enjoys the paper?" sounds weird, like you're que…

To me it sounds like this: "Sam enjoys the paper?" could have emphasis on "Sam" and sound fine - it is asking if it is Sam or someone else who enjoys the paper. "Sam enjoys the paper?" could have emphasis on "enjoys" and sounds fine - it is asking if Sam enjoys the paper or feels some other way. "Sam enjoys the paper?" could have emphasis on "paper" and sounds fine - it is asking if Sam enjoys the paper or something…

Right, but in all the "Sam enjoys the paper?" uses, you'd normally only do that if you were repeating something already said, and questioning a specific part of it. Like your friend said, "Sam enjoys the paper" and you're asking for a clarification by repeating and emphasizing a part of the statement.

Otherwise, it's just easier/clearer to phrase it like "Who was enjoying the paper?" or "How does Sam feel about the paper?" or "What does Sam like to read?"

But those constructions don't necessarily apply to other regional variants of English (especially if English is a second language for them). In that case they may be adapting their English grammar to be closer to the syntax of another language they speak.

Several of us here, including myself, are guessing that the blog author may be Indian (I'm not sure, it's just a guess). If so, there are papers studying this phenomenon or something close to it (I'm not really sure... I'm interested in languages, but I'm not at all a linguist and this is way over my head...). I'll quote (emphasis added) one paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265785678_Embedded_...

> The corpus study reported here challenges a conventional assumption in the World Englishes literature concerning the grammar of L2 English in India: that auxiliary inversion with wh -movement (henceforth wh -inversion) is exactly the opposite of standard U.S. and U.K. English, being impossible in main clauses yet obligatory in embedded clauses (Bhatt, 2000 ; Mesthrie & Bhatt, 2008 ; Trudgill & Hannah, 2008 ). 2 If the prevailing account were valid, this language variety would constitute a rogue grammar in the sense of Thomas ( 1991 ). However, the results suggest that, in this respect, the grammars of L2 users of English in mul-tilingual societies, just like those of monolingual speakers of standard varieties, fall within the compass of Universal Grammar (UG).

In other words... what you're saying makes perfect sense to me and presumably other speakers of some broad "American English" because we're used to those formulations. English elsewhere in the world, possibly including wherever the blog author came from, does not necessarily follow the same rules all the time, especially if English is just one of a matrix of languages they use throughout a week, mixing and matching languages and grammars according to who and what they need to communicate.

As an aside... if stuff like this interests you, the movie Arrival might be interesting? It's that rare pop-sci movie that tries to actually deal with alien linguistics instead of hand-waving it away with a universal translator/babelfish.

Re: Why did Airbnb dump React Native? (2021)

#64

Post by awb »

dspillett wrote: post #28
googlryas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 t…

I’ve worked on several projects with relatively new web/mobile tech and the line: “Here’s how we solved it at my previous company” or “Here’s how [similar size, well marketed company] is doing it” is extremely persuasive to management and fellow engineers as it de-risks the situation.

By the time the new idea has its new problems, the company you followed (or one similar) has probably already posted about solving it, or shared a newer new idea you can try.

Re: Why did Airbnb dump React Native? (2021)

#66

Post by jslakro »

blkhp19 wrote: post #30

Weird to see this poorly-written blog post make it to the front page. It misses so many details that the official blog post includes https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/react-native-at-airbnb...

One of the conclusion from the article: is React Native bad, No. It depends on the type of app your are developing... Of course!, since the day 1 of any web framework running as a native one. A post without any contribution

Re: Why did Airbnb dump React Native? (2021)

#67

Post by RadixDLT »

labrador wrote: post #41
sandofsky wrote: post #38

It looks like the author has zero connection to AirBnB and is entirely speculating on what went down based on what the company themselves wrote. You're much better off just reading AirBnB's own long, detailed series on what happened: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/sunsetting-react-nativ... That said, I find it perfectly represents about 90% of React Native evangelism: someone who has never shipped an app copyi…

YouTube is in danger of becoming the video site of last resort if they keep allowing SEO engineers to drive good content down and instead drive garbage to the top Also, I got my first DMCA takedown the other day. They said I'm allowed 3 before they delete my site. All my videos passed the copyright check when I uploaded them so I relied on that as fair use. It occurred to me that my site will inevitably be taken down…

why I'm suing youtube https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32488049

Re: Why did Airbnb dump React Native? (2021)

#68

Post by poulsbohemian »

azangru wrote: post #51
TakeBlaster16 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you've thought about this already, but you might want to `yt-dlp` your videos now if you care about preserving them.

Where would you host them?

Not perfect for everyone but for my commercial content, Vimeo has been a good choice in terms of presentation, storage, and cost.

Re: Why did Airbnb dump React Native? (2021)

#69

Post by tmpz22 »

enra wrote: post #52

This is very inaccurate in many aspects, not sure if actually anything accurate in this except the fact that Airbnb did use and eventually dumped RN (source: I worked at Airbnb 2015-2019 on the platform team). As others have linked, Airbnb actually did write a summary about this. Basically what went down: For years Airbnb had actually pretty strong native mobile engineering both on iOS and Android (some of the best e…

> Timelines were often tight

I wonder if those tight timelines seem justified in retrospect. The stress. Missed social events.

Re: Why did Airbnb dump React Native? (2021)

#70

Post by gigel82 »

enra wrote: post #52

This is very inaccurate in many aspects, not sure if actually anything accurate in this except the fact that Airbnb did use and eventually dumped RN (source: I worked at Airbnb 2015-2019 on the platform team). As others have linked, Airbnb actually did write a summary about this. Basically what went down: For years Airbnb had actually pretty strong native mobile engineering both on iOS and Android (some of the best e…

> Mobile engineers didn’t want to write RN code and web engineers didn’t want to build on mobile

That's interesting. In our experience, we're having a difficult time hiring folks that want to write native (including UI) in antiquated languages and frameworks - but it's much easier to hire JavaScript folks that just hack at RN.

Of course, someone still needs to stand up the actual platform, as well as write shared (and sometimes platform specific) pieces of functionality mostly in C++ so for now I guess us oldtimers still have some job security :)

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