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The way Discord tamed React Native was writing its chat view entirely native. This is the area in which users probably spend 99% of their time. Similarly, in th

The way Discord tamed React Native was writing its chat view entirely native. This is the area in which users probably spend 99% of their time. Similarly, in the Facebook and Instagram apps, React Native is banned from the home timelines and other areas where performance matters. Recently Discord finally ported their Android app over. Even if you separate the "change is bad" factor, many users report it's quite laggy and a major regression from their previous native version. I find it funny when people cite high profile companies as success stories without having a benchmark for failure. "The users didn't abandon the product in droves" is a very low bar when you have externalities that would prevent them from leaving even if they wanted to. You could find the Amazon app total garbage, but just how bad does it have to be to pass on free two day shipping?

jimmygrapes 4y ago
Discord on Android has absolutely taken a step backward since the shift. Just a little bit in UX/I (text input is larger than it used to be and doesn't scale with any appearance settings), but significantly in assigning messages to the correct person. Many a time in the past few weeks where a chunk of my messages in a DM get attributed to the other person after a minute or two, presumably due to some sync issue. I ain't impressed.
hitekker 4y ago
React Native has two kinds of proponents: managers who don't want to deal with expensive mobile engineers and frontend web developers who don't want to learn mobile engineering. It's labor-saving and over-engineering combined into one seemingly respectable package. And I'm saying this as a manager and a former web developer. Flutter seems to have more respect for the craft of mobile engineering, which alienates managers and developers looking for an easy fix for their jobs and their careers.

jimmygrapes 4y ago

Discord on Android has absolutely taken a step backward since the shift. Just a little bit in UX/I (text input is larger than it used to be and doesn't scale with any appearance settings), but significantly in assigning messages to the correct person. Many a time in the past few weeks where a chunk of my messages in a DM get attributed to the other person after a minute or two, presumably due to some sync issue. I ain't impressed.

hitekker 4y ago

React Native has two kinds of proponents: managers who don't want to deal with expensive mobile engineers and frontend web developers who don't want to learn mobile engineering. It's labor-saving and over-engineering combined into one seemingly respectable package. And I'm saying this as a manager and a former web developer. Flutter seems to have more respect for the craft of mobile engineering, which alienates managers and developers looking for an easy fix for their jobs and their careers.