The initial experiment with React Native in 2017 was motivated by a few factors:
- The design of iOS and Android apps were nearly identical, with similar interaction-design, features, and content.
- Maintaining two codebases is challenging, with different data designs, bugs, and coordination for developing new features. (More on this in a minute.)
- Our mobile team is small, so the transition didn’t require coordinating large numbers of engineers.
- Our website was already using React, so we had in-house expertise with the concepts and tools to help with the transition.
