htormey

F1 is how many H1B students (such as myself) started on our road to becoming an immigrant.

A large part of the appeal of an expensive USA graduate course is that it allows you a way to get a job in the USA after.

It works like this in tech. 1) Do a masters or > 1 year course in a relevant field. 2) after the course you have 1-3 years of occupational practical training in that field. This means you can apply and accept any relevant job without waiting for a h1b or anything like that.

Then from there you get your company to apply for a h1b and then convert to a greencard. Then from greencard you go to citizenship. This was my path.

Pressure on universities like this discourages foreign students from enrolling and hence stops or slows this processes.

Was this ever not the case for the majority of software engineers?

They talk about looking at flutter in the article.

React Native is widely used in both Instagram and the main Facebook app (market places). It’s also used in a number of other apps they make (oculus, ads manager).

Microsoft Office has gone all in with React Native as well. Here is a recent comment from Andy Coates talking about MS Office Android performance:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20413046

Other article talking about it:

https://blog.appfigures.com/microsoft-goes-all-in-on-react-n...

Here are some details on Hermes perf with sample code:

https://mobile.twitter.com/htormey/status/114935339023051980...

Here is a video comparing start times for a Hermes/non Hermes RN app:

https://mobile.twitter.com/nparashuram/status/11493502142154...

I’m currently at Chain React in Portland and they just gave a talk on Hermes. I tweeted a few screenshots that show other perf numbers/technical details for those who are interested.

Binance hack was 44 million (7000 * current btc price) not 400 million, right?

https://www.ccn.com/stolen-bitcoin-moved-spiders-web-binance...

Wasnt this the premise of earn.com?

When I worked on the main iOS app at Facebook they used multiple solutions in parallel in the app (ComponentKit, AsyncDisplayKit, RN).

So the fact that some projects are using some new server driven technology for some features doesn’t really prove anything.

Unless they specifically announce they are dropping RN support from the app or you see a big drop off in pull request activity I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions.

The H-1B visa is not designed to encourage people to start new companies. It’s for people coming to America who want to work for existing ventures.

If you are from India or China you will likely spend a decade or more on this visa before you can get a green card and be able to start your own company. Europeans have it a little better as visa quotas are based on geographic regions.

I know all this because I was on a H1B for 6 years. I really wanted to start my own company but I couldn’t do so until I got my green card.

I think it’s wrong to conflate arguments in favor of immigrant founders with H1B workers. H1B visa holders are easier to exploit than US citizens as they have no real job security. This is the main point of contention with the visa and as a former H1B holder I feel inclined to agree with this critique.

I wish the companies and individuals who call for more H1B visas would instead call for comprehensive visa reforms which would enable qualified immigrants to start companies immediately.

Aside from it being fun to work on a small team early on in your career a startup is a great place to gain experience if you come from a non traditional background or didn’t go to a top tier university.

Experience and fast career progression shouldn’t be overlooked when looking at startups.

Nah, that wasn’t my experience (apple/Facebook). Just look at the levels posted here:

https://www.levels.fyi

Hitting 400k total comp if you have the right experience (5-10 years, good brand university or companies) is totally doable.

Bugs yes, crashes no. If you go with React Native research how to include the JavaScript stacktrace when submitting a crash report to crashlytics etc. It will make tracing things easier.

A big problem with React Native is upgrading versions and third party libraries. This is the biggest pain point for most people I work with. Things break regularly and you have to be very careful with regard to reading release notes and testing.

“ -Would you do it over again?”

It depends. I’m a native iOS engineer whos spent a bunch of time doing React native development. I’ve worked on multiple React Native projects that have shipped.

If I was creating a new app from scratch I would hands down use React Native for most projects.

If I was working on an existing native project, (native iOS/Android code base), I probably wouldn’t use React Native.

“Did your team ever rewrite or wish they went native initially? ”

It really depends. 95% of the people using React Native are web engineers and React Native is their first experience doing mobile. Those people don’t regret using React Native.

The people who I’ve worked with or encountered who did regret using React Native are people who’ve used it within an existing native app. These people are usually native engineers with little prior exposure to React or Javascript. I have also done brownfield React Native and I can understand why they would have this perspective.

“- What was the decision to go React Native”

Productivity and cost. It takes a lot less time to ship a cross platform React Native app than to build it twice in kotlin/swift. If you do consulting/contracting work or you are an early stage startup on a budget React Native is a no brainer for most projects. Multimedia projects or games being notable exceptions.

“My initial reaction for React Native is, it is great in the beginning but can cost companies a lot of money and time in the long run (as seen by Airbnb, Udacity, and NextDoor.) Though some big orgs do use it successfully here and there (Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram) throughout their apps.”

All of those organizations have large engineering teams and are doing brownfield (integrating React Native into an existing project) apps. That is most likely not what you are doing.

Brownfield React Native is about 2-3x as hard as building a new app from scratch. I gave a presentation explaining why this is the case earlier in the year at chain React:

https://youtu.be/44YdvFAwQwA

I agree with you. "Easy" is very subjective and to be fair, I never said that meeting any of my 3 criteria was going to be a walk in the park.

Just getting a visa to work in the USA like I had to do is hard and disqualifies most of the planet (~7.7 billion) people.

Getting into a decent, internationally recognized university is also difficult and likely filters out a huge number of people.

Nah, you don't need to get all political to make those numbers. ~300k total comp is not that hard to obtain as a salary if you meet the following criteria:

1) Are willing and able to work in SF/Seattle/NYC.

2) Have a degree from a decent university (preferably in CS) and about 3-6 plus years of experience.

3) You spend a lot of time prepping for coding interviews (i.e reading https://careercup.com, etc)

See:

https://www.levels.fyi/

Those numbers and levels are pretty accurate albeit a little low based on my experience living in the Bay Area.

The problem is that 300k actually doesn't go that far when you factor in rent/mortgage and the concept of starting a family in those cities.

Where are the bulk of their users based? I assume China right? Surely the ARPU in China is way less than the USA where FB/Snap/goog/twtr own most of the market.

This is pretty on point. I work as a consultant in the Bay Area with a number of startups and I see these trends.

I know several startups doing Berlin offices. Also, contracting work seems pretty easy to come by over here.

I’d also make the argument that restricting migration out of a country can be of benefit to that countries economy. This was the case with South Korea after its civil war:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea

“Following the Korean War, South Korea remained one of the poorest countries in the world for over a decade. In 1960 its gross domestic product per capita was $79,[57] lower than that of some sub-Saharan countries.[58] The growth of the industrial sector was the principal stimulus to economic development. In 1986, manufacturing industries accounted for approximately 30 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 25 percent of the work force. Benefiting from strong domestic encouragement and foreign aid, Seoul's industrialists introduced modern technologies into outmoded or newly built facilities at a rapid pace, increased the production of commodities—especially those for sale in foreign markets—and plowed the proceeds back into further industrial expansion. As a result, industry altered the country's landscape, drawing millions of laborers to urban manufacturing centers.”

A good book that talks about this economic transformation and how it was achieved is bad Samaritan’s:

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capital...

The books author is a Korean economist who grew up during this period. One point that he makes which is very interesting is that South Korea had very strict laws preventing its academics from migrating to other countries. Those that did travel abroad to study were forced to return and participate in the economic development of the country. He attributes this as part of the reason for South Korea’s turn around.

China is another economic success story that restricts its citizens movements. Not saying that I agree with either of these policies. Just bringing them up as eastern counterpoints to the notion that unlimited free trade and free movement are the optimal states for economic development.

Didn’t the EU have strict capital requirements for countries joining it? I am from Ireland originally and I seem to recall this being a topic of discussion when I was younger.

I would imagine that countries within the EU don’t have the same Standards of living/earnings gap between them as say a developing country & a western one. Hence, their is not the same incentive to mass migrate.

The color coded map on this article is a good example of this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...

Look at TrueUSD. They are a US based company that holds USD in escrow and do this:

https://www.trusttoken.com/trueusd/

I was at a talk by them last week and they talked through the process they used to stay compliant.

Large consumer apps generally are iterative affairs where the engineers & designers have a big say in the final product. At any given time Airbnb probably has multiple cross functional teams building different features.

These teams are probably constantly testing and iterating the final design based on user research and testing.

At least that was my experience working at Facebook on their iOS app.

"keeping in mind that rumour that Facebook was removing RN from some of their projects"

Where are you getting that from? The React Native team at Facebook just put out a roadmap that seemed to indicate they were still very committed to the project and investing in it:

http://facebook.github.io/react-native/blog/2018/06/14/state...

"At Facebook, we're using React Native more than ever and for many important projects. One of our most popular products is Marketplace, one of the top-level tabs in our app which is used by 800 million people each month. Since its creation in 2015, all of Marketplace has been built with React Native, including over a hundred full-screen views throughout different parts of the app."

Can someone explain what the differences are between React and Vue? Why is this a good idea and what benefits would it afford me as a React Native developer?

“According to Google’s data, for native apps 80% of time is spent in each users’ top 3 apps. Just 3 apps!“

I also probably spend a large percentage of my time online on a handful of websites. That doesn’t mean the other 20% of my time isn’t incredibly valuable and not worth building an app/website for.

As an advertising company Google have plenty of incentives to push PWAs. Apple, who own the minority hardware platform with the most affluent users, do not. So long as this is the case their will be a strong monetary incentive to build Apps as the PWA experience will always feel a little off.

A non technical point glossed over by this article is the discoverability app stores afford the end user. I see this in person all the time: I tell someone about a new service or online store and the first thing they do is search the App Store for an app not the web.

In summary I think companies will build PWAs as either a complement to an existing mobile app or as a first product when they don’t have the budget to build an app.

I’d love to see an article summing up some of these concerns re Chinese debt. If you have a good one please post it. Thanks.

Here is a really good video on steem:

https://youtu.be/6HseuaDMmGo

Guy uses it a lot. The video goes into its history and some of the issues that have emerged on the platform.

I assume because it allows you to trade in and out from crypto positions to something that tracks fiat.

This of course assumes that this coin can actually hold its value in the event of a market crash. I also assume it’s not backed by real dollars held in a bank but some kind of basket of other cryptoassets right?

So what Dapps does anyone here use apart from decentralized exchanges and crypto kitties?

One I came across recently that looks promising is joy stream:

http://joystream.co

Joy stream appears to be a service which rewards people for hosting torrents. I could see this being used by a lot of people.

Are their any services that provide usage figures for any of these Dapps? I’d be curious to know how much they are used as I think Dapp usage is a good bellwether for utility token valuation.

I really want to see crypto currency move beyond just being used for speculation.

Cointracker is my goto for automatically tracking trades across multiple exchanges and wallets. I don't even use it for Taxes yet. It's really worth checking out. I expect big things from these guys.