I think not clearly understanding the tradeoffs was a huge factor here, but I would go one step deeper into that decision-making process.
One thing that could happen when making a decision like ObjC vs Swift is that the decision makers can think they have performed a sober risk/benefit analysis, but failed to dig deep enough to uncover show stoppers. So they may have looked at developer productivity with Swift and took a cursory look at build times for a small pilot, but failed to look deep enough to find some of the crippling shortcomings.
Related to the first point, a lot of the time with a new technology, the show stopper bugs/shortcomings/issues haven't been discovered yet. If you're choosing a battle-tested technology, most of the nasty edge cases and limitations have been discovered at some point. But with something new, there's a lot more uncertainty with what you'll run into once you put it into production.
That risk of surprises is higher with some new tools and technologies than others. But it's a big wildcard when you're betting your billion dollar business on it. Maybe that bet pays off, but you need to do some sober analysis on that risk of unknown unknowns and have some idea of how and when you'd make the decision to cut your losses.
Rewriting apps (esp. as large as Uber) is essentially your plan meeting the enemy. There's many unknown-unknowns simply because technology is complex, and although it's pretty much unprovable, the brisk pace of technology also means you'll have more unknown-unknowns. Only a big industry shift in priorities will change that now.
One thing that could happen when making a decision like ObjC vs Swift is that the decision makers can think they have performed a sober risk/benefit analysis, but failed to dig deep enough to uncover show stoppers. So they may have looked at developer productivity with Swift and took a cursory look at build times for a small pilot, but failed to look deep enough to find some of the crippling shortcomings.
Related to the first point, a lot of the time with a new technology, the show stopper bugs/shortcomings/issues haven't been discovered yet. If you're choosing a battle-tested technology, most of the nasty edge cases and limitations have been discovered at some point. But with something new, there's a lot more uncertainty with what you'll run into once you put it into production.
That risk of surprises is higher with some new tools and technologies than others. But it's a big wildcard when you're betting your billion dollar business on it. Maybe that bet pays off, but you need to do some sober analysis on that risk of unknown unknowns and have some idea of how and when you'd make the decision to cut your losses.