Ash Furrow — Migrating to React Native: A long-term retrospective

In 2013, Artsy launched its iOS application. Ash joined a year later. Written in Objective-C and built using a cutting-edge architecture, the app was the most impressive codebase that he had ever worked in. In 2015, Swift was added to the codebase. But in 2016, React Native too. Today, nearly all development is done using React Native. So what happened? In this talk Ash will walk you through the history of Artsy’s iOS codebase. You will learn about the process for making technical decisions, and how that process has changed as the team has grown. You will learn how they have created a workplace where web engineers make valuable contributions to the iOS app. You will learn lessons from failures and successes. And you will learn the most important lesson of all: that technical decisions are always cultural decisions.