Finally some common sense. Time to put electron to rest.

What I find interesting is how AI has changed the cost of maintaining two native apps enough that a decision that made no sense a few years ago is worth revisiting now

This is what happens when you have too much cash on hand. You start wasting it and doing dumb things. Like rewriting entire apps in two different languages.

using React Native you end up having to drop into native code to do anything interesting or optimized, so it feels kind of pointless to not just use the platforms directly

I've been out of FE dev from awhile, is React still leading? I feel like Vue might be taking over?

“We debated between gradually migrating to native (brownfield) versus rebuilding them from scratch (greenfield)… However, this time greenfield emerged as a clear winner for the following reasons”

“To solve this problem, we built a system called Helix that takes a more gradual approach. It doesn't expect the first output to be correct, and builds a loop where an imperfect attempt simply cannot move forward until it becomes a good result.”

If this is driven by proper engineering then hats off! Supposedly a simpler app has already been migrated and they are working on migrating the main app using this approach. I don’t even know how I can be a cynic here… because the technology is good enough and so are the engineers I don’t know how management or executives could ruin it.

“…product quality people expect today. This isn’t just the same apps rewritten in different languages. We’re rebuilding them so both humans and agents can understand, test, and change them quickly.”

If this was written using AI and human-edited, you missed a spot.

if native became easier to tackle with coding agents, react native would have been even more easier to scale. this decision doesn't sit well with me.

I think in the end, we should just be writing some prototyping language, then let AI translate into target/native development language of the said platform.

Code and optimization is going to be a niche moving forward

Would be nice if Spotify and Notion did the same.

They are admitting React was a shtty choice for a mobile app if they have a choice.