5 ms·

See, and I think that React Native is terrible, and Airbnb abandoning it clearly shows that their engineering culture is solid and not driven by cargo cult engi

See, and I think that React Native is terrible, and Airbnb abandoning it clearly shows that their engineering culture is solid and not driven by cargo cult engineers chasing the latest fad.

coldtea 8y ago
>and Airbnb abandoning it clearly shows that their engineering culture is solid and not driven by cargo cult engineers chasing the latest fad. Depends on what they pick next (and why they picked RN before in the first place?), but as a standalone decision it's not enough to "clearly show" anything of the sort.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  I’m not sure about that. The ability to identify and accept a hard problem, and then do something about it, speaks of good management in their engineering department.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    We just know that they changed toolkits. Not whether they did it to adopt a better one, out of some new fad, with valid reasons, etc...
    - gpeal 8y ago
      Author of the Airbnb blog post here. Airbnb is fully invested in 100% native right now.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  Agreed, it was a (probably too subtle) retort to the idea that them abandoning it clearly meant they’re a dysfunctional mess.
resters 8y ago
I use the Airbnb app a lot and have done so for years and there is nothing terribly advanced or unusual going on. It may have been a cargo cult decision to layer RN into whatever they had beforehand, but if so that increases the chance that evicting it was also a cargo cult decision. Read the blog posts, they had no approach to app-side state and it was essentially a battle between sub teams to see who could make their own ad hoc approach to state “win” organizationally and force other teams to deal with it when data sharing. Sounds like a nightmare both from a cultural and engineering perspective. It made it so the only way to get a unified engineering perspective was a political “purge” of RN adherents.
cheriot 8y ago
They also started making enough money that the cost of two native development teams isn't a problem.
Apocryphon 8y ago
It's certainly possible for both RN and AirBnB's internal organization to not be great.
chrisco255 8y ago
Discord uses React Native, and they only have two developers on their iOS app. Millions of users, impressive app with high performance...two devs.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  I haven’t used their app, but scaling an app isn’t actually that difficult if the backend can handle it. I don’t think that their use of RN is relevant here unless you think there’s no way that a native iOS app of similar complexity couldn’t be built by two devs? But then you’d have to explain all the counterexamples, or even where a solo dev builds an app that goes viral and gets millions of users...
  - k__ 8y ago
    "airbnb abandoning it shows it's bad, but other companies using it successfully doesn't sbow it's good!"
    - nv-vn 8y ago
      Abandoning something takes more work than using it, since it adds the cost of a rewrite. If Airbnb adopted framework X that wouldn't make me confident in framework X -- they haven't even used it yet! If they used it for a long time that would increase my confidence in X (in the absence of evidence to the contrary). But if everyone else started abandoning X I'd take Airbnb's experience with a grain of salt. I get that Discord is able to do well with it, but that doesn't mean everyone is able to do well with it depending on their needs. And who knows, maybe Discord is having just enough trouble that it hurts but too little to switch.
      - chrisco255 8y ago
        They give it rave reviews: https://blog.discordapp.com/why-discord-is-sticking-with-react-native-ccc34be0d427 https://blog.discordapp.com/why-discord-is-sticking-with-rea...
    - 8y ago

See, and I think that React Native is terrible, and Airbnb abandoning it clearly shows that their engineering culture is solid and not driven by cargo cult engineers chasing the latest fad.

coldtea 8y ago

>and Airbnb abandoning it clearly shows that their engineering culture is solid and not driven by cargo cult engineers chasing the latest fad. Depends on what they pick next (and why they picked RN before in the first place?), but as a standalone decision it's not enough to "clearly show" anything of the sort.

eksemplar 8y ago
I’m not sure about that. The ability to identify and accept a hard problem, and then do something about it, speaks of good management in their engineering department.
- coldtea 8y ago
  We just know that they changed toolkits. Not whether they did it to adopt a better one, out of some new fad, with valid reasons, etc...
  - gpeal 8y ago
    Author of the Airbnb blog post here. Airbnb is fully invested in 100% native right now.
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
Agreed, it was a (probably too subtle) retort to the idea that them abandoning it clearly meant they’re a dysfunctional mess.

resters 8y ago

I use the Airbnb app a lot and have done so for years and there is nothing terribly advanced or unusual going on. It may have been a cargo cult decision to layer RN into whatever they had beforehand, but if so that increases the chance that evicting it was also a cargo cult decision. Read the blog posts, they had no approach to app-side state and it was essentially a battle between sub teams to see who could make their own ad hoc approach to state “win” organizationally and force other teams to deal with it when data sharing. Sounds like a nightmare both from a cultural and engineering perspective. It made it so the only way to get a unified engineering perspective was a political “purge” of RN adherents.

cheriot 8y ago

They also started making enough money that the cost of two native development teams isn't a problem.

Apocryphon 8y ago

It's certainly possible for both RN and AirBnB's internal organization to not be great.

chrisco255 8y ago

Discord uses React Native, and they only have two developers on their iOS app. Millions of users, impressive app with high performance...two devs.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
I haven’t used their app, but scaling an app isn’t actually that difficult if the backend can handle it. I don’t think that their use of RN is relevant here unless you think there’s no way that a native iOS app of similar complexity couldn’t be built by two devs? But then you’d have to explain all the counterexamples, or even where a solo dev builds an app that goes viral and gets millions of users...
- k__ 8y ago
  "airbnb abandoning it shows it's bad, but other companies using it successfully doesn't sbow it's good!"
  - nv-vn 8y ago
    Abandoning something takes more work than using it, since it adds the cost of a rewrite. If Airbnb adopted framework X that wouldn't make me confident in framework X -- they haven't even used it yet! If they used it for a long time that would increase my confidence in X (in the absence of evidence to the contrary). But if everyone else started abandoning X I'd take Airbnb's experience with a grain of salt. I get that Discord is able to do well with it, but that doesn't mean everyone is able to do well with it depending on their needs. And who knows, maybe Discord is having just enough trouble that it hurts but too little to switch.
    - chrisco255 8y ago
      They give it rave reviews: https://blog.discordapp.com/why-discord-is-sticking-with-react-native-ccc34be0d427 https://blog.discordapp.com/why-discord-is-sticking-with-rea...
  - 8y ago