5 ms·

I'm not sure his example of Facebook's app is a good one, considering how terrible it was in design. Wasn't it essentially their JS stuff transpiled (with some

by sidlls 10y ago

I'm not sure his example of Facebook's app is a good one, considering how terrible it was in design. Wasn't it essentially their JS stuff transpiled (with some extras) that turned into an 18000 class, ~100MB bloated monster of an APP? That isn't a problem with "native". That is a problem where developers fucked up the engineering.

qzervaas 10y ago
Facebook's apps are the not the first place I would look for model example of "how things should be done" in (native) apps. It feels like the UI is changed quite frequently, which when you combine with the bugs and various anti-patterns (out of order content, making basically any activity appear in the "globe" notification, messenger opening another app, unable to find old posts, etc, etc..), it's a super-irritating experience at all times.
nradov 10y ago
What's the practical problem with Facebook's native mobile app? It's fast and reliable on my two-generations-obsolete cell phone, and as a user I don't care how they made the sausage.
- sidlls 10y ago
  I'm speaking in the context of development time and cost. Their app was very expensive to develop, but it wasn't because it was "native."
bkanber 10y ago
They, like most companies would, decided that getting it out to market quickly was more important than delaying a half or full year to "get the engineering right". But that's some kind of logical fallacy, because engineering doesn't mean "designing beautiful things", engineering means understanding both the theory and the practice, and making tradeoffs so that you get something that meets a variety of needs. That's what I see technical debt as. A lot of people think "technical debt" is just bad decisions that accrue over time, but you can also get into debt by taking out a loan -- with interest. I got into debt when I bought my house. Your city probably used debt to build new schools. Governments use debt to fund, well, the whole country. Facebook took out debt to move faster. And then they had to pay it back with interest, just like my mortgage and those municipal bonds that funded the schools and the treasury notes that trade our foreign debt. Fortunately they paid it back by further developing react native, and they're still pushing. I think the Facebook engineering team is good -- they simply wouldn't survive if they weren't, and they're doing fine. I don't think they fucked anything up. I think they were conscious of the loan they were taking out, and had a repayment plan in place. So in that sense they did the responsible thing, and took out a loan for the right reasons. It worked out well for them. -- I'm very interested to see where react native goes. I think Microsoft will see an opportunity to push against Apple, because people are falling out of love with Macs and are starting to like the Surface. And if the Surface starts selling, the Phone would too... except that MS has an ecosystem problem. There aren't many developers targeting Windows Mobile, and there's not a ton of expertise there as compared to Android or iOS. By backing React Native, they can get developers onto Windows platforms faster, which means the ecosystem can keep pace with the market if they can keep showing quality hardware especially for power users and professionals. So we may see some MS+FB friendship in the near future.
- xorxornop 10y ago
  Well, they (MS) have Xamarin, which is free, and targets Android, iOS, and WP. You could likely share a lot of the codebase with a UWP app also, since it's all .NET natively or supported (UWP supports other languages, eg. JS, C++ etc). It's a pretty compelling option, and works well in my experience.
  - tluyben2 10y ago
    I am one of those people who like Xamarin, especially now that it is open source. But needing a Mac for iOS is a pain. I understand it is hard to not work like that but it is annoying. That said, I do like Xamarin and currently work fast in it.

by sidlls 10y ago

qzervaas 10y ago

Facebook's apps are the not the first place I would look for model example of "how things should be done" in (native) apps. It feels like the UI is changed quite frequently, which when you combine with the bugs and various anti-patterns (out of order content, making basically any activity appear in the "globe" notification, messenger opening another app, unable to find old posts, etc, etc..), it's a super-irritating experience at all times.

nradov 10y ago

What's the practical problem with Facebook's native mobile app? It's fast and reliable on my two-generations-obsolete cell phone, and as a user I don't care how they made the sausage.

sidlls 10y ago
I'm speaking in the context of development time and cost. Their app was very expensive to develop, but it wasn't because it was "native."

bkanber 10y ago

They, like most companies would, decided that getting it out to market quickly was more important than delaying a half or full year to "get the engineering right". But that's some kind of logical fallacy, because engineering doesn't mean "designing beautiful things", engineering means understanding both the theory and the practice, and making tradeoffs so that you get something that meets a variety of needs. That's what I see technical debt as. A lot of people think "technical debt" is just bad decisions that accrue over time, but you can also get into debt by taking out a loan -- with interest. I got into debt when I bought my house. Your city probably used debt to build new schools. Governments use debt to fund, well, the whole country. Facebook took out debt to move faster. And then they had to pay it back with interest, just like my mortgage and those municipal bonds that funded the schools and the treasury notes that trade our foreign debt. Fortunately they paid it back by further developing react native, and they're still pushing. I think the Facebook engineering team is good -- they simply wouldn't survive if they weren't, and they're doing fine. I don't think they fucked anything up. I think they were conscious of the loan they were taking out, and had a repayment plan in place. So in that sense they did the responsible thing, and took out a loan for the right reasons. It worked out well for them. -- I'm very interested to see where react native goes. I think Microsoft will see an opportunity to push against Apple, because people are falling out of love with Macs and are starting to like the Surface. And if the Surface starts selling, the Phone would too... except that MS has an ecosystem problem. There aren't many developers targeting Windows Mobile, and there's not a ton of expertise there as compared to Android or iOS. By backing React Native, they can get developers onto Windows platforms faster, which means the ecosystem can keep pace with the market if they can keep showing quality hardware especially for power users and professionals. So we may see some MS+FB friendship in the near future.

xorxornop 10y ago
Well, they (MS) have Xamarin, which is free, and targets Android, iOS, and WP. You could likely share a lot of the codebase with a UWP app also, since it's all .NET natively or supported (UWP supports other languages, eg. JS, C++ etc). It's a pretty compelling option, and works well in my experience.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  I am one of those people who like Xamarin, especially now that it is open source. But needing a Mac for iOS is a pain. I understand it is hard to not work like that but it is annoying. That said, I do like Xamarin and currently work fast in it.