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Comment by kd5bjo | Hacker News Reader

The pitch internally at Facebook for React Native wasn't that UI code could be written once and used everywhere. Instead, their goal was to let engineers move between web, iOS, and Android development without retraining. This lets them have one photos team, for example, that is responsible for the photos portion of the product across all supported platforms.

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I remember a catchphrase/motto of "learn once, write anywhere"

So basically “lowest common denominator” is their development strategy? The Facebook app is one of the worst on my iPhone. It lags, it sucks power.. I would expect that if the people that invented React “native” can’t make it similarly as performant as real native, then random developers out in the wild aren’t going to do much better — this an ecosystem of iPhone apps that suck simply because they were designed for the worst possible Android phone.

React Native is a godsend to tiny startups, but for companies that can actually afford to hire teams.. it’s an insult to the user to use React “native” and pretend that the app is any good. I own an iPhone because of the features of an iPhone, but companies like Facebook want to handicap my experience because someone’s low-end Android can’t keep up?

Facebook has always sucked at mobile. First they insisted on phonegap-style bullshit, now React “native.” Do they not have the budget to actually hire real Swift or Java/Android developers? I am not sure why “mobile” is considered a platform — perhaps they should instead develop for actual iOS and Android rather than treating those two different OSes and experiences as identical. Android and iOS users would likely be much happier.

For the record, most of Facebook’s app is not currently built in React Native so please don’t use it to judge RN. I could go into why FB app quality ends up low but don’t think it’s that relevant to this discussion.

And FWIW Facebook probably employs over a thousand iOS and Android developers. It’s not a “budget” thing for us.

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