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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

#961

Post by elliottkember »

jkmcf wrote: post #956
vendiddy wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I don't think LLMs magically solve the problem that comes with writing twice. Even if they were to write for two platforms, they'd likely want to have a whole bunch of business & state management logic that would be shared between the two with the native part being a thin platform layer. It seems like a mostly shared codebase (reglardless of specific tech choice) would let them get precisely the end…

Besides API features, it won't require downloading 0.5 GB of web browser in order to run. Sure, you can make it smaller, but how many companies actually do this? Sure, you can make it faster, but how many companies actually do this? Accountants and product managers don't care about speed or size -- that's a user problem. Judging by the app sizes I download (and try to avoid), few companies really care about the user…

React native does not render in a browser.

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

#962

Post by [deleted] »

mitxela wrote: post #915
TuringTest wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty well if you don't mind some features being built twice or three times and appearing inconsistently at different screens, or users being able to bypass usage limits by pressing the back button on the usage limit sign...

The usage limit is trying to block scrapers and xcancel. It's already reset by the time your cursor gets to the back button.

[deleted]

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

#964

Post by runtime_terror »

lirolero wrote: post #866
pavelstoev wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are we talking about here - Spotify or Shopify ? If Shopify - and you are concerned about their engineering teams, please consider that Shopify's revenue grew from roughly $205 million in 2015 to $11.56 billion in 2025, reflecting an explosive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 45% across the past decade. Market validates ! I have nothing to add about Spotify - I use it to listen to music and it works we…

> Spotify or Shopify Both. The post is about Shopify, but some of the comments expanded the conversation to include Spotify as well. > In a sane society, Shopify’s opinion on anything engineering related would be thrown into rubbish [...]. > This is unfortunately not an isolated case, Spotify for one has the same issue, [...]

fwiw the post mentioned Shopify and Spotify, hence why you see discussion of both

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

#965

Post by runtime_terror »

alex_sf wrote: post #614
SoftTalker wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So exactly what value are you adding, then?

I take the specifications from the customer and type them into the AI

Funny that none of the commenters got the reference/joke

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

#966

Post by runtime_terror »

oceansky wrote: post #850
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I asked for feedback Even if they gave you feedback I think you would have to take it with a pinch of salt. Hiring decisions are more emotional than most people would admit.

Even an emotional feedback could be potentially useful for self-improvement. Asking doesn't hurt.

Most companies avoid this for liability reasons

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

#967

Post by bonesss »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #734
Vegenoid wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify has progressively gotten much worse over the last 15 years, all while the size of their engineering team has ballooned. I am very unsurprised by this outcome. People wonder why good software becomes bad, and it’s because the people who were good at engineering are often outmaneuvered by corporate-politics savvy people in a growing company. One of the best political moves in a company is to have a lot of peopl…

When it comes to number of engineers, always keep in mind that it costs more engineers to maintain (and understand) software than the initial development push.

I’d add on to that lifecycle demands: a development project with no users has a tight cheap feedback loop with high quality bug reports with relatively obvious bug sources, once issues start working through layers of QA and customers the per-issue costs raise by several factors (50x to 200x are numbers I’ve seen from research, YMMV).

I would feel very confident slapping something onto Chrome ‘back then’ with only internal users. Today, with millions of users and CEO-level attention to screwups, I’d use a lot more time per issue. It’s a fundamentally different risk/reward/confidence situation.

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

#968

Post by austin-cheney »

abustamam wrote: post #957
austin-cheney wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dont see the correlation between company type (tech/software/X company) and sucking at your job though. 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…

> People can suck when they are allowed or expected to suck. This is not a unique concept to software or any company type though. You don't have to look far on the antiwork subreddit to find people who work in all types of different industries, technical and not, big and small, where some people just suck and everyone knows it and no one does anything about it.

That is true, but it’s also why most industries require licensing and/or certifications. These things are not 100% effective, but are still excellent at removing disqualified candidates.

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

#969

Post by austin-cheney »

abustamam wrote: post #908
sgammon wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are selling the code as the product, it could be said to be an “actual” software product, rather than a mechanism for selling other products, or software as a substrate for some other business. Those other businesses aren’t any less valid, of course. They just aren’t software businesses. They are businesses that (quite sensibly) use software.

Is Facebook, a company that build software to sell ads, a software company or an ad company? I think its a bit bikesheddy, if not pointless, to try to confine companies to labels like this.

Absolutely an ad company, 100% without question.

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

#970

Post by littlecranky67 »

zingar wrote: post #920
littlecranky67 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same result here just using plain Opus 4.8+. I had a web ap with a PWA approach. Now I have an iOS app written in Swift/SwiftUI and an Android app in Kotlin in the appstores. I do not know how to code a single line of Swift or Kotlin. You just test the app and iterate with the AI over it until it is stable and does what it should.

My main agentic coding side project is something that I can't justify paying the apple developer license for. If I was an Android person or I didn't have to pay the developer license, maybe I'd just go for it.

Android got wirse than Apple. It costs 25 dollar now to get ID verified (mandatory) and before you can publish in the Ply store you need 12 betatester that install the app from a special link - those testers must keep the app installed 14days. Only then will you become visible publicly in the play store.

So you end up paying people on Fiverr to do it which costs more than 99€

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