Reminder that Shopify's CEO and COO are both literally Nazis and they host websites for literal Nazis.
What, exactly, is a "literal Nazi" -- I think Tobi is German, but he seems more like a capitalist than a national socialist. /shrug
Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
491–500 of 963 posts
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#492I 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…
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Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously! What a bonkers thing to claim. "I had codex use maestro so I assume it made Android work well and idiomatically". It's a fine project to do but clearly they put zero value on being familiar with the project's codebase/stack and ecosystem, which makes me feel fear in my heart when I imagine the first "production is down" page coming in. I already hated mobile because it's so much harder to maintain than web…
I wrote every single line of the react native app we ported, and maintained it for 9 years. So suffice to say, I'm familiar with the code. But I am going to always prioritize the user experience over a developer (like myself)'s need for satisfaction to see code. And a pure native app is _always_ going to behave better than react native. This gives me a chance to do that.
>So suffice to say, I'm familiar with the code.
You are familiar with the React Native code, you are not familiar with the Swift or Kotlin code, and likely nobody on your team is, since the AI wrote all of it for you.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sarcastic. I have a moderately successful app and I haven’t once looked at the code (though I am capable, so far atleast). The only time I open Xcode is if I have to modify signing certificates. I did set up a slack workflow with a “fix it” button that basically tells Codex to fix the issue, run comprehensive tests, manually UI test for that particular issue with computer use and then deploy it.
Equal parts very cool and very scary to me
It is. For my day job, I’m a software engineering director and I probably won’t have a job in under five years. For low to medium complexity apps, even Codex before Astra was capable of doing it completely by itself from scratch. For testing I would bring up the app after each atomic change and then manually try it out. I also use my own app heavily multiple times a day and I have found dozens of issues but I just ask Codex to fix it on the spot.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#495As an iOS Engineer that has been fighting the battle against every C-level type who brings up the subject of a shared codebase my whole career, I feel very validated.
I don't see why you would, unless your argument for your whole career has been that LLMs make this easy.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#496As an iOS Engineer that has been fighting the battle against every C-level type who brings up the subject of a shared codebase my whole career, I feel very validated.
They specifically say in the post how React Native was the correct decision and that it worked well for them.
Now it's a different situation as implementation has become incredibly cheap.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#497[dead]
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#498I agree w/ advising people to move off React Native, though I think the story that "LLM enabled an otherwise too-expensive migration to consider" is not correct. I say this because I was part of a migration from a mid-size React Native app to a Swift/Kotlin native app redo. I did the majority of the technical work on it. The majority of the work occurred before January 2026 and without LLM code assistance, though lat…
> The continued React Native tax of unnecessarily difficult upgrades,
My very first experience of RN was having to update an app to handle the mandatory change to 64 bit APKs
Which required a massive update not only to several dependencies but also xcode, iOS frameworks, the weird objective C caches that get smuggled into node_modules, _as well as_ all the rigmarole or making the 64 bit APK build work
It was completely miserable
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#499As an iOS Engineer that has been fighting the battle against every C-level type who brings up the subject of a shared codebase my whole career, I feel very validated.
FWIW, the native app specialists are in some sense the most invalidated here. Shopify decided they couldn't afford your skill set and didn't change their mind until you could be replaced with an LLM.
Really the whole concept of technology specialization is the thing in jeopardy. It no longer appears to work to make a career out of deeply learning something obscure. Agent-farming generalists appear to be the ones who own the future right now (if, heh, not the agents themselves).
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#500Dropping React and going back to raw JavaScript next? I am still mourning pre-React GitHub. Maybe rose-tinted glasses, but it was so pleasant to use
I don't think UI frameworks will go away any time soon. They solve a very different problem from React Native.