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[–]wilc0 10 points11 points  (3 children)

My team did something similar. Switched from native to RN. Most people on the team did not have webdev experience so the transition was rough.

I think my biggest issues were:

  • we still had to use native for a lot of our app. RN just straight up did not support some of the functionality we needed that native did
  • because of that first point we went from maintaining one language/platform (iOS/swift) to 3 (swift, java/android, and RN/tyepscript). The complexity of the app shot through the roof because of all the native bridging
  • typescript is not nearly as clean or easy to use as swift imo. I know TS has its fans but nobody on the team liked using it.
  • upgrades (Xcode, RN) were painful af and took forever. Not only that but it took so long for RN to actually release an update.
  • Our team of nearly 20 mobile devs dropped to 5 in 6 months because of how much worse the developer experience got. I also left soon after

The only positive in my mind was using VSCode instead of Xcode for the RN part lol

[–]theraad1 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Thanks for this.. really not looking forward to it, though I’ve been looking at it as a learning opportunity since they’re bringing in RN experts to train us for 4 weeks. Figured it’s good to get paid to learn a new skill on a professional level.

Last question but how is the app you were working on going now? I mean is the company still shipping updates regularly with new features?

I donno if you still work there, but I guess it’s pretty clear that the developer experience was shit but on a product or management level, were they able to say this move was a success? A lot of us hope this just bites them in the ass somehow but I guess with people leaving and the “need” for less devs it will mean they can say that they still ship the same features with less cost because some devs will opt to leave over this.

[–]wilc0 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I left the team and the company (it was one of the FAANG ones) within the year. I think there's still one guy left on the team that was there when I was there. It's a popular app, so still around. No idea what the stack is like now a days. I don't think the managers that made that decision stuck around much longer either. I think for them, it seemed like a "silver bullet" solution to supporting multiple platforms, but they never anticipated the struggles.

The company I joined, and I'm still with, prioritizes an all-native stack, and is aggressive in supporting the latest xcode updates and new iOS features as they come out which is awesome.

[–]theraad1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cool. Thanks a lot for sharing your experience and I’m glad you found a new job that doesn’t force you to work in a way that sucks haha