SoundCloud • Jan Monschke • Aug 3, 2016

React Native Implementation at SoundCloud

Article Summary

Jan Monschke and Peter Minarik from SoundCloud took a gamble on five-month-old React Native technology. The result? They shipped a production app in four months instead of the estimated six.

In 2015, SoundCloud faced a critical shortage of iOS engineers while building their creator app, Pulse. With eager web developers available and React Native showing promise in design prototypes, they decided to test whether this nascent framework could handle a production mobile app. This is their story of going from skeptical spike to shipped product.

Key Takeaways

Three developers (two JS, one iOS) shipped the app in 4 months with full test coverage
Cross-platform code reuse can reach 85%, reducing new feature costs by 80-90%
Existing iOS libraries bridged easily to React Native through native modules
Live reloading and Chrome debugging massively shortened the developer feedback loop
Bi-weekly React Native updates required extra maintenance time for third-party library compatibility

Critical Insight

SoundCloud successfully leveraged web engineering talent to ship a production mobile app 33% faster than estimated, proving React Native viable for teams with more web than mobile engineers.

The team discovered an unexpected advantage that went beyond just shipping faster, one that fundamentally changed how their designers work.

About This Article

Problem

SoundCloud's React Native team needed to check if the framework could work with their existing native infrastructure. They had CI/CD pipelines, acceptance testing, and app store distribution processes already in place from their iOS and testing teams, and they wanted to know if React Native could fit into those systems.

Solution

SoundCloud worked with their iOS team to build a CI environment in just days that matched what they already had. Instead of creating new acceptance testing and app store distribution systems, they reused the knowledge and processes their iOS team had developed.

Impact

By fitting React Native into their established native workflows, the team cut down on manual work. This meant their engineers could spend the four-month development cycle building features instead of setting up infrastructure.