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> Because they have massive platform specific teams, and they would like not to. I'm somewhat shocked at the size of some of the mobile app development teams a

> Because they have massive platform specific teams, and they would like not to. I'm somewhat shocked at the size of some of the mobile app development teams at some of these companies. There's no way they need that many developers. What are 100's of developers doing on a single app for a single platform? How is there enough work for that many people? The overhead must be unbelievable. I can't imagine that adding a platform abstraction is going to fundamentally change the headcount if your headcount is already ridiculous. It just doesn't remove that much effort.

Androider 7y ago
The Facebook app is like Microsoft Word. Everyone only uses 20%, but it's a different 20% for each. The app is a hojillion megabytes, and serves literally billions of users. There's features in there that addresses some specific niche in Africa for "only" 50 million users, that some sub-team of a sub-team is tasked with maintaining.
- wvenable 7y ago
  Microsoft doesn't use an abstraction to create Word for Mac OS. They have shared code, yes. But they are different products with different user interfaces to match their respective platforms. I'm not sure why mobile is so different that one needs a platform abstraction if you've already got a bazillion developers working on the product. Of course, Facebook does benefit by owning that abstraction making it exactly what they need. For everyone else, the risk is a bit different.
  - Androider 7y ago
    Microsoft has been building Word on Windows since the 80's, so it's never going to be re-written. I'm not that familiar with the Mac version of Word, but I find the Mac Excel version lacking compared to its Windows counterpart. For Word and Excel for iOS and Android they use... React Native [1]. [1] https://blog.appfigures.com/microsoft-goes-all-in-on-react-native-for-their-mobile-apps/ https://blog.appfigures.com/microsoft-goes-all-in-on-react-n...

Androider 7y ago

The Facebook app is like Microsoft Word. Everyone only uses 20%, but it's a different 20% for each. The app is a hojillion megabytes, and serves literally billions of users. There's features in there that addresses some specific niche in Africa for "only" 50 million users, that some sub-team of a sub-team is tasked with maintaining.

wvenable 7y ago
Microsoft doesn't use an abstraction to create Word for Mac OS. They have shared code, yes. But they are different products with different user interfaces to match their respective platforms. I'm not sure why mobile is so different that one needs a platform abstraction if you've already got a bazillion developers working on the product. Of course, Facebook does benefit by owning that abstraction making it exactly what they need. For everyone else, the risk is a bit different.
- Androider 7y ago
  Microsoft has been building Word on Windows since the 80's, so it's never going to be re-written. I'm not that familiar with the Mac version of Word, but I find the Mac Excel version lacking compared to its Windows counterpart. For Word and Excel for iOS and Android they use... React Native [1]. [1] https://blog.appfigures.com/microsoft-goes-all-in-on-react-native-for-their-mobile-apps/ https://blog.appfigures.com/microsoft-goes-all-in-on-react-n...