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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

#441

Post by jrochkind1 »

azuanrb wrote: post #387
jrochkind1 wrote: post #268

I'm not totally following the part about the simulator(s), probably because I haven't actually done mobile development before. > When simulator interaction is needed, the CLI can connect to them via a remote mode and drive the UI via commands without having to inspect the layout or the accessibility tree. This enables blazing-fast performance and E2E tests. I think I'm not following. Don't you still need to test the…

It’s a reasonable tradeoff. Shopify uses Rails, and there’s been a long history of discussion around E2E testing in the Rails community. In recent Rails releases, system tests, or E2E tests, are no longer enabled by default. The short version is that they’re significantly slower and more brittle. Basecamp also removed most of their E2E tests. I don’t know what Shopify does internally, but my guess is that they’ve tak…

On theweb, not surprised that Rails switched from kind of encouraging people to use as many browser-automated tests (under whatever name) as possible , to trying to discourage people from using any. Rails way really likes being absolutist.

I work in Rails too, I try to keep them to a minimum, but I definitely try to do at least one happy-path test of any major page (which includes automated accessibility audit), going without them at all seems insane to me.

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

#442

Post by hollowturtle »

lmf4lol wrote: post #370

Yesterday, just before bedtime, I pointed Astra at our Electron Desktop app, and asked it to write me a native Swift app for iOS. The electron app has 750 unit tests and 50 something integration tests. It also had access to the electron app via mcp and could click around and inspect it. I also gave Astra read only access to the backend code. It worked for 3 hours and delivered a nearly feature complete port. Today, I…

psychosis

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

#444

Post by thi2 »

ChiperSoft wrote: post #115

Before I even opened the article I knew the reason was because LLMs don't need abstractions. React Native was always about making app construction easier for people who don't want to learn ObjC or Swift. If you're not writing or even reviewing the code yourself, this is unneeded overhead. For a while I've been wondering why people are even bothering with high level languages if you aren't even gonna read the code.

> React Native was always about making app construction easier for people who don't want to learn ObjC or Swift.

There are more OS than just iOS, depending on the app a lot of shared logic has to be written only once with RN.

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

#448

Post by sokoloff »

nfw2 wrote: post #417
thm76 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took "identical" as in feature wise. The user should be able to accomplish the same things, no matter what platform they're using. I do think that the way the features are implemented should be platform dependent, i.e. use common UX pattern on each platform, fit in with the UI, and be good platform citizens.

Why does Shopify need to use Apple's or Google's branded design language in their app?

Because if I’m an iOS user and used to that and you give me a conventional Android app UX, I’m going to feel that as jank.

Same as if I’m an Android user and you give me the conventional iOS experience.

It’s like if I gave a swing or Gtk+ or Xwindows app experience on Windows 11 or MacOS. It would be usable, but feel conspicuously sub-standard.

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

#449

Post by ojr »

hylaride wrote: post #161
kelnos wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think people in the tech community have probably also noticed that it's rather popular to have an absolute opinion on the goodness or badness of these tools. I don't think that's necessarily true. Nuance is a thing. These tools are bad, objectively! They give inferior user experiences, and waste resources (ever more important now with RAM prices what they are). But that doesn't mean I can't understand or even agr…

Nuance is always a thing. Native apps are faster and better most of the time. Electron and React Native wouldn't annoy me so much if they were used with small apps where it's not worth over-optimizing. However, it's now the default for Multiplatform apps that are used constantly, including IDEs, chat apps, etc. They gobble up memory and cpu cycles and are constantly getting updates due to the shitshow that is the jav…

React Native apps make more revenue than Flutter and Native apps according to Revenue Cat report published on June 3rd, 2026.

https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/engineering/why-react-native...

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

#450

Post by elpakal »

nfw2 wrote: post #269
paxys wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the “makes sense or not” part can change based on a bunch of factors. It’s actually pretty common for a new company to start fully native (only iOS, few features, limited scope), then switch ro react native/electron (need to support more surfaces, features are being developed too quickly), then back to fully native (can afford individual dev teams for each platform).

The main cost of two engineering teams shipping identical products in my opinion isn't the cost of those extra engineers, it is in the product and organizational challenges of keeping those two products that need to be identical in sync. I am very bullish on coding agents but would be wary of this turning into a mess.

Very true, especially when there are different turn around times and review policies for the various app stores, things can get out of sync quickly
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