931–940 of 962 posts
2020-01-29: https://shopify.engineering/react-native-future-mobile-shopi... ("After years of native mobile development, we’ve decided to go full steam ahead building all of our new mobile apps using React Native.") 2021-11-08: https://shopify.engineering/high-performance-hydrogen-powere... ("The future of commerce is dynamic, contextual, and personalized. Hydrogen is a React-based framework for building custom and cr…
To be less dismissive it seems an industry wide problem that big splashy projects get rewarded while the silent “Snow Leopard” mind numbingly obvious just up your quality and fix bugs and UX issues work goes unnoticed.
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I answered elsewhere that I don’t personally use Android phones but we have people on our team that do. Which is why I don’t want to personally claim that it feels native. But yes we are having real Android users test it. So it’s quite the contrary. I care MORE what real users say. I can only guarantee that the app does things when I tap. So I’m not trusting the agent on UX, only on functionality. But whether it feel…
That's much better than my original, perhaps unfair, read. Thanks for the additional info. I still would feel scared operating an established product off a newly changed stack the team isn't familiar with though.
But our product now has a way more extensive test suite than it ever did, again, thanks to the agents writing pretty damn good tests.
2020-01-29: https://shopify.engineering/react-native-future-mobile-shopi... ("After years of native mobile development, we’ve decided to go full steam ahead building all of our new mobile apps using React Native.") 2021-11-08: https://shopify.engineering/high-performance-hydrogen-powere... ("The future of commerce is dynamic, contextual, and personalized. Hydrogen is a React-based framework for building custom and cr…
If React Native worked well for human programmers, wouldn't it be just as good for AI?
Models have gotten a lot better at generating native iOS apps. The main appeal of RN was being able to leverage your web devs for mobile dev. that's what I did at my last company. And it's fine for a startup, but eventually you want dedicated native engineers bc each platform really deserves its own technical masters who can optimize for it. But now that all code is generated, there's little upside to having an RN ap…
Nobody is talking about the real advantage of RN: Being able to release to the App Store without having to go through a review. That's so massive. Getting a bug fix out to users instantly, sneaking in optimizations, etc.. Sure, you need a review to release native code changes, and you should probably get a review if you have big feature changes just for the sake of Apple not banning you. But in practice, it removes o…
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> 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 complete…
It's still like this and now they release new versions and breaking changes way faster. Not to mention they nudge you to Expo now and outsourced nearly everything to other (outdated) dependencies and companies. Stay far away from RN if you value your sanity, it lead to my burnout.
And as for outdated dependencies, breaking changes, and unfriendly companies, the reason I ever got into RN was after trying to build an iOS app using SwiftUI (and then bailing to UIKit to no avail). Talk about a borked ecosystem.
The frameworks, developer tools, languages, and iteration speed of RN hands down beat any one platform, and you have one model for your data and state which is an unequivocal win. I agree it has plenty of warts, but the arc of progress is that they have been going down steadily.
If you're a 3k person developer team where 200ms can cost millions a year, then by all means go purely native. Though I bet if they'd just gone to the new architecture and spent 1/5 of the cost in agents optimizing things and building a few native bridges they'd have nicer apps and be shipping faster.
2020-01-29: https://shopify.engineering/react-native-future-mobile-shopi... ("After years of native mobile development, we’ve decided to go full steam ahead building all of our new mobile apps using React Native.") 2021-11-08: https://shopify.engineering/high-performance-hydrogen-powere... ("The future of commerce is dynamic, contextual, and personalized. Hydrogen is a React-based framework for building custom and cr…
I don't understand the logic. AI vs Human development still have similar cost profiles. It costs $ per unit of thought (salary or tokens). If React Native worked well for human programmers, wouldn't it be just as good for AI?
- stack A needs lots of tedious, not-quite boilerplate not-quite-copy-paste work whenever you implement something, but reduces cross-OS bugs, UX and accessibility issues down the line. Lots of dev frustration, slows down iteration (when humans actually have to do this).
- stack B has awesome DX and affords smooth operation of the design/UX/dev teams, very fast. More issues down the line, though. May be worth it if unaided humans need to work on it.
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I worked at Expedia for a bit. Ask yourself if they are a tech company, software company, or travel company. It’s not a trick question. They have a shit ton of software developers that work there. Same with Bank of America where I also worked. In fact BoA has more software developers as employees than almost any other company. Compare those to a company whose only product is software or is primarily a software servic…
I dont see the correlation between company type (tech/software/X company) and sucking at your job though. Ive never worked for a, as you define it, "software" company because the software ive built has always been in service of selling other things, but people who sucked at their jobs got let go quickly. And there are absolutely software companies that hire sucky people. I don't know for certain if the people who wor…
The difference is in culture and expectations. People can suck when they are allowed or expected to suck. They can’t suck when the employer sets high expectations. If a company wants to ease hiring and employment flexibility they have to set the bar low to increase the prospective candidate pool. Otherwise they have to be extremely selective and/or train people.
Perhaps the distinction is outside your imagination because it’s outside your experience.
Numbers from GPT Astra - Shopify has 3000 engineers as of 2026 - Google Chrome when released in 2008 conservatively had ~ 60 engineers. - GTA 5 in its credits had 150 software engineers. Surprising even to me who has had many an experience of being in a bloated FAANG team, this 150 includes GTA Online! In a sane society, Shopify’s opinion on anything engineering related would be thrown into rubbish because they seem…