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Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin

shopify.engineering

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Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin

#31

Post by atonse »

We did the same thing - had 90% of it overnight. Then spent a few days in the background tweaking for polish.

Our app is smaller, and has about 15-20 screens. I started at about 12:30am by giving codex a goal and it inventoried every screen based on the react native code, then created android and iOS directories, used maestro (I had already set up this tooling for a previous personal app build a few weeks prior), and had the whole thing working in android and iOS in the morning. Took it about 6 hours while I slept.

The app is way smaller, launches instantly, and the android app is (supposedly) native looking. I say supposedly because I don't use android phones. But it's using Jetpack Compose and Kotlin.

And I don't know Swift or Kotlin. I honestly don't see the point of React Native anymore. I know Expo is doing very cool agentic stuff, but I'm just not sure why I'd need any of it when I can write a native app.

Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin

#32

Post by aatd86 »

lackoftactics wrote: post #7

I believe this will be overall trend in industry. Dropping React Native and Flutter for native

That would be a huge mistake if we expect many more hardware and OS running them efficiently than just iOS and Android. Best is to have an IR. Now maybe that IR can be turnt into native code. But we shouldn't be constrained. As an incoming framework author, SwiftUI is problematic for instance because it has a programming model which is dated. And I don't particularly enjoy the language either. Looked fine at first and then got more complex than I feel is needed.

oh yeah, disclaimer: I write UI frameworks and dabble in PLs.

Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin

#33

Post by codechicago277 »

randysalami wrote: post #22

“We debated between gradually migrating to native (brownfield) versus rebuilding them from scratch (greenfield)… However, this time greenfield emerged as a clear winner for the following reasons” “To solve this problem, we built a system called Helix that takes a more gradual approach. It doesn't expect the first output to be correct, and builds a loop where an imperfect attempt simply cannot move forward until it be…

Getting 11% AI on Pangram, which isn’t bad tbh.

Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin

#35

Post by faangguyindia »

React Native is slow.

Hermes VM doesn't even have JIT.

If the majority of your app is native code and only a few places are stitched together via JS code that runs in the Hermes VM, then React Native is suitable for you.

Look at V8 vs. Hermes performance.

We use Flutter; we rarely need to write native code. We have three apps: Symbiote workout app, CalorieCodex, an AI calorie tracker app, and MacroCodex with 17,000+ users, all of them completely free

Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin

#36

Post by greenowl »

atonse wrote: post #31

We did the same thing - had 90% of it overnight. Then spent a few days in the background tweaking for polish. Our app is smaller, and has about 15-20 screens. I started at about 12:30am by giving codex a goal and it inventoried every screen based on the react native code, then created android and iOS directories, used maestro (I had already set up this tooling for a previous personal app build a few weeks prior), and…

And people say AI isn't taking SWE jobs...

Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin

#37

Post by alostpuppy »

atonse wrote: post #31

We did the same thing - had 90% of it overnight. Then spent a few days in the background tweaking for polish. Our app is smaller, and has about 15-20 screens. I started at about 12:30am by giving codex a goal and it inventoried every screen based on the react native code, then created android and iOS directories, used maestro (I had already set up this tooling for a previous personal app build a few weeks prior), and…

This has been my conclusion as well. Agentic workflows drops the effort level in keeping two native code bases in sync.

Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin

#39

Post by ex-aws-dude »

I don’t understand why building an app twice is a big deal in the first place if that’s a core part of your business

Like wouldn’t you want to invest in platform specific expertise long term?

It’s not like this is a small company or it’s just a dinky side project off of the main business

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