[bastawhiz]

I'm not convinced from the article that HTML-first was the thing that fixed the problem. What fixed the problem was 1) the person building it knew what they were doing and 2) it had design constraints from the get-go to be user-friendly. You can do that with React. It's arguable whether it's easier or better, but you can get there regardless of the approach you use.

[yawaramin]

1. Presumably the team that made the previous app also thought they knew what they were doing. Presumably they were not hired on the assumption that they couldn't make a good app.

2. The design constraints had always existed, the previous app just failed to meet them.

[gbacon]

1a. They may have thought they knew what they were doing, but their work product shows otherwise.

1b. They may have thought they knew what they were doing and spoke confidently enough to convince whoever was doing the acquisition, likely non-technical, of the same, but the bad hire and the bad hire’s work product shows that neither was the case.

2. Ideas merely exist. To be constraints, they must be enforced.

[yawaramin]

1a & b. Sure, but you wouldn't know that ahead of time. You'd have to wait until they finished the app.

2. It was enforced, just at a higher level (expensive fines triggered by customer complaints). A good engineer broke down and actually applied the constraints in a preventative way.