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AirBnb went exactly through this transition and back... Coinbase is just behind by a couple of years. Perhaps Coinbase' engineers, are better, or a different

AirBnb went exactly through this transition and back... Coinbase is just behind by a couple of years. Perhaps Coinbase' engineers, are better, or a different breed from Airbnb' ones, or perhaps React Native has matured more since 2019. Can't give you an answer. Linkedin had the exact iteration years ago. They had one of the first NodeJS Apps, driven mobile apps, and made some glossy block posts, praising it. Then quietly went back to native. Facebook went back and forth with HTML 5 sound the same time, etc.. etc.. It is like seeing the same movie over and over, with just some minor plot twists, they tend to play out the same. Since the Java's Applets promise 'write once, run everywhere', this story instead has been always the 'write once, debug everywhere'. "Sunsetting React Native Due to a variety of technical and organizational issues, we will be sunsetting React Native and putting all of our efforts into making native amazing." https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/sunsetting-react-native-1868ba28e30a https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/sunsetting-react-nativ...

tshaddox 5y ago
What then do you think is the “correct state” that they should skip all the experimentation and jump straight to? Personally, I suspect the reason that big teams are experimenting (and finding successes despite some failures and trade offs) is because this is a difficult problem that isn’t solved and requires ongoing creativity and experimentation.
- ardit33 5y ago
  I am not dismissing React Native, and saying it is a bad technology, (it is pretty good for a certain type of apps) and it can work for some. If you see my end note, "to more junior engineers", don't use React Native in your project because X company is using it, and it must be trendy. Use it only if you do enjoy using it. If you are already good/skilled at building native apps, then you might not need it at all.
macando 5y ago
AirBnB tried to mix their big native codebase with React Native and end up with a Frankenstein.
SatvikBeri 5y ago
The article specifically mentions that they spent a lot of time interviewing AirBnB about their experience and links to the same post. "If you’ve read Airbnb’s excellent Sunsetting React Native article, these challenges may sound familiar. We spent many hours speaking with engineers from Airbnb and trying to learn from their experiences. We’re grateful to the team for sharing the details of their journey, as the information was invaluable in deciding the best path for Coinbase. One of our key takeaways was that the brownfield approach seemed to be core to many of the challenges they faced. While the idea of incrementally migrating is at first glance appealing — leveraging the benefits of React native for new features without the upfront cost of a full rewrite — it introduces significant technical and cultural migration risk over the long term."

tshaddox 5y ago

What then do you think is the “correct state” that they should skip all the experimentation and jump straight to? Personally, I suspect the reason that big teams are experimenting (and finding successes despite some failures and trade offs) is because this is a difficult problem that isn’t solved and requires ongoing creativity and experimentation.

ardit33 5y ago
I am not dismissing React Native, and saying it is a bad technology, (it is pretty good for a certain type of apps) and it can work for some. If you see my end note, "to more junior engineers", don't use React Native in your project because X company is using it, and it must be trendy. Use it only if you do enjoy using it. If you are already good/skilled at building native apps, then you might not need it at all.

macando 5y ago

AirBnB tried to mix their big native codebase with React Native and end up with a Frankenstein.

SatvikBeri 5y ago

The article specifically mentions that they spent a lot of time interviewing AirBnB about their experience and links to the same post. "If you’ve read Airbnb’s excellent Sunsetting React Native article, these challenges may sound familiar. We spent many hours speaking with engineers from Airbnb and trying to learn from their experiences. We’re grateful to the team for sharing the details of their journey, as the information was invaluable in deciding the best path for Coinbase. One of our key takeaways was that the brownfield approach seemed to be core to many of the challenges they faced. While the idea of incrementally migrating is at first glance appealing — leveraging the benefits of React native for new features without the upfront cost of a full rewrite — it introduces significant technical and cultural migration risk over the long term."