I wonder why not Kotlin Multiplatform. I’ve been using LLMs to build with KMP for about 10 months and it’s a delight and you can use native Swift UI when you want to. It seems to be the best of all worlds.
Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
511–520 of 963 posts
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#512I wonder why not Kotlin Multiplatform. I’ve been using LLMs to build with KMP for about 10 months and it’s a delight and you can use native Swift UI when you want to. It seems to be the best of all worlds.
I've been out of the app world for ages, always liked kotlin. Can you speak more about multiplatform?
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see why you would, unless your argument for your whole career has been that LLMs make this easy.
My argument is that platform specific codebases is the right course of action. My point is that consumers can tell, the product is better, and developers are happier working on native codebases.
They're right when it makes business sense, which is also about cost and why Shopify didn't do it before.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure why someone would say it was a wrong decision. Why would they even need to do this if LLMs make coding easier. They are likely chasing the things I advocate for: direct access to latest APIs from each platform, platform specific UI, UI that behaves correctly on each platform without chasing down edge case solutions (also said as ui that looks and feels "right"), and a bonus of separate developer pool to hire…
> Not sure why someone would say it was a wrong decision. Writing almost anything with javascript sucks ass to begin with. Writing native code with it is even more painful. Most javascript engines don't even have any decent model of parallelism. It takes zero imagination to see the problem here
how much parallelism are you writing in your frontends?
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see why you would, unless your argument for your whole career has been that LLMs make this easy.
My argument is that platform specific codebases is the right course of action. My point is that consumers can tell, the product is better, and developers are happier working on native codebases.
You're looking at it from iOS side only, and for a US company that would be the last platform they'd ever drop.
It was a different picture out of the Apple garden, when a company only brings their next major feature to iOS because they couldn't be bothered to hire the same headcount on two development teams and their CEO uses an iPhone anyway.
We had that discussion about a decade ago with a company rep that didn't realize 70% of their EU users were on Android yet their play store app didn't have the feature they were planning to promote.
Basically, better was the enemy of good for most companies.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure why someone would say it was a wrong decision. Why would they even need to do this if LLMs make coding easier. They are likely chasing the things I advocate for: direct access to latest APIs from each platform, platform specific UI, UI that behaves correctly on each platform without chasing down edge case solutions (also said as ui that looks and feels "right"), and a bonus of separate developer pool to hire…
> Not sure why someone would say it was a wrong decision. Writing almost anything with javascript sucks ass to begin with. Writing native code with it is even more painful. Most javascript engines don't even have any decent model of parallelism. It takes zero imagination to see the problem here
I mean, why would they admit to it being the wrong decision. Its a business.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#517Earlier quoted context omitted.
My argument is that platform specific codebases is the right course of action. My point is that consumers can tell, the product is better, and developers are happier working on native codebases.
They're right when it makes business sense, which is also about cost and why Shopify didn't do it before.
I'm not arguing the business sense. Two sides can be right which is why I advocated for native development. Which is vindicated here.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see why you would, unless your argument for your whole career has been that LLMs make this easy.
My argument is that platform specific codebases is the right course of action. My point is that consumers can tell, the product is better, and developers are happier working on native codebases.
> developers are happier working on native codebases.
Agents are happier working on any codebase, but ultimately Shopify and other companies want iOS native app level quality without the huge cost of hiring many native iOS / Android devs.
LLMs and Agents deliver on getting a native app out at lower cost, higher quality, faster all at once.
I think everyone is trying to tell you your skills as an iOS native dev have been commoditised and Shopify and others don't need to hire anymore native devs to find this out.
I don't see how your job being completely commoditised and cannibalised by LLMs replacing your job is some how vindication?
This is just like saying "we won the argument", but what did you actually "win"?
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
My argument is that platform specific codebases is the right course of action. My point is that consumers can tell, the product is better, and developers are happier working on native codebases.
You're looking at it from iOS side only, and for a US company that would be the last platform they'd ever drop. It was a different picture out of the Apple garden, when a company only brings their next major feature to iOS because they couldn't be bothered to hire the same headcount on two development teams and their CEO uses an iPhone anyway. We had that discussion about a decade ago with a company rep that didn't r…
Correct, I advocated for the solution that produced the best outcome for user experience, code and architecture simplicity, and prevented having to rewrite an app in the future in native. Which has been validated here.
The android shortfall is a real one but I also pushed for hiring native android developers too.
Re: Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
Damn, we really gotta get rid of the vibe coders. Bad things are on the horizon if we keep encouraging these naive habits.
How do you propose getting "rid" of "Vibe coders" (which I'm assuming you're pooling me into?)
Severe financial liability for security breaches, severe enough that, for instance, companies which leak 1m+ user data are driven to bankruptcy
[yes, this would also get rid of the previous generation of 1000-JS-lego vibers]