This is exactly the decision we have made (though we didn't start with native). It just makes a lot more sense to make native apps and customize to take advantage of different native capabilities. AI essentially makes this a lot easier, and the end result just feels a lot nicer.
Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
451–460 of 963 posts
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of this matters anymore. We have LLMs. It's easy to build native everything now without much resource expenditure. Android will be Kotlin. iOS will be Swift. Desktop and server will be Rust. Web will be TypeScript / React for now, but maybe one day WASM. LLMs are the target now.
FYI I've been building an app, Android first, and discovered the magic of Kotlin Multiplatform. The LLM modularized everything so that it's substantively the same code base, but with Swift only where it's needed. Still working through it, but it seems like a great and underrated platform to build on.
You're not emitting the code yourself anymore. The platform ease of use for humans no longer matters as much (if at all).
Preference for a native feel, solid software, bugfree code, compile/develop velocity, LLM friendliness.
We're in a brand new world.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same conclusion here. My current preferred setup is native for iOS and Android with common core in rust exposed through uniffi
I was surprised by your comments and then you do Rust to be called via Java or Kotlin and Swift? What does your app do?
Yes uniffi created swift and kotlin bindings. The app I did with this is just a sudoku game https://www.puzzlesight.com . Before AI I would have reached for something like Flutter to avoid doing all work twice but with AI doing two apps makes more sense.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's extra egregious there is I do understand the logic because developing for Windows is such a fucking nightmare, that they're also responsible for.
I assure you, developing for competing platforms is also a fucking nightmare... that's something Microsoft has no monopoly on!
And I assure you, developing for Mac is a delight, and Linux is not so bad either. Windows, however, fucking disgrace.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
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), goin…
Forgot the source but DHH mentioned it's not all, just most. Still makes sense to have on some scenario, just not all, or the default anymore
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#456I first learned about the shopify app when I saw a purple "shop" checkout button. Next, I got an email saying that if I wanted to track my package I needed to download an app. No thank you. I don't want your app on my phone. I don't want to browse other stores in the shop app. I want to see my package and its status without enjoying a new "social shopping experience" or whatever.
I now avoid buying things from anyone who use the dreaded purple "shop" button.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mistakes you describe are only possible if the company doesn’t really think there’s proprietary IP in the codebase. If a company really believed there’s valuable IP in code, there would at a minimum, ban laptops or ban code on laptops[0], provide and maintain a centrally managed LLM gateway[1] that handles authentication, billing and model choice, have MDM to prevent you from using your own Claude login, etc. [0]…
I'd wager many software startups out there would consider their code valuable IP (even if in the AI era it's not), and don't have these types of IT controls in place. Startups I worked at gave you an email account, github access to their private repos, and that was that. Heck, you don't even need to mix up a personal and business AI subscription. For the vast majority of folks one day their IDE "updated" and a bunch…
You are merely describing companies that aspire to consider their code valuable IP, not companies that actually do so.
IDE updated? It’s the company IT’s job to perform testing before distributing those updates. And also their job to use whatever managed settings to disable those unmanaged AI features.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What specifically are the ux differences?
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rust is uncompetitive for the use case of sharing logic between mobile apps. Kotlin has Swift interop and KMP is a mature tech by this point.
This is probably biased by the specific multi-platform apps I've worked on, but my default assumption is that sooner or later, any non-trivial multi-platform app will need to reach for something that doesn't already have a KMP library and that, on Android, might require compiling native code via the NDK. Rust has a way bigger library ecosystem than KMP. So I figure one might as well do the cross-platform core in Rust…
KMP can call into native libraries easily. C FFI is not a competitive advantage.
Rust has a smaller library ecosystem, I'd say. Kotlin can use Java libraries on the server side, and on the client side on Android, and the ones needed on iOS are easy to convert to KMP - IntelliJ can do it semi-automatically. And KMP has the libraries that matter on mobile, for hardware access, animations and so on.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#460I first learned about the shopify app when I saw a purple "shop" checkout button. Next, I got an email saying that if I wanted to track my package I needed to download an app. No thank you. I don't want your app on my phone. I don't want to browse other stores in the shop app. I want to see my package and its status without enjoying a new "social shopping experience" or whatever. I now avoid buying things from anyone…
true absolute cancerous bs