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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

#471

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #28

If you put every company that needs/has an app on a spectrum, there is a line somewhere that roughly divides them into two groups: where Electron/React Native/etc. makes sense or not. It's just a normal engineering decision: solving problems given limited resources. Companies have different problems and different resources. I think people in the tech community have probably also noticed that it's rather popular to ha…

I think this is something we’ll see AI very meaningfully impact — the threshold needed for “Get this thing working on a tech stack we might not be familiar with” has gone waaaaaaay down.

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

#472

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

spiderice wrote: post #327
tonic_note wrote: post #243

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…

Are you saying a native app can't make an http request and update the code they JIT?

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

#474

Post by Capricorn2481 »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #261
sfn42 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any actual experience with React Native and Electron, but with that caveat out of the way I personally think tools get far too much blame that should be on developers. For an example that I actually have experience with, React very frequently gets criticized for being slow, heavy etc. React is not slow. I can make (have made) fast and snappy websites in react. React can render at more than 60fps if neces…

A shitty developer can create a far worst experience on react then on native.

Most developers cannot make any experience on Native.

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

#475

Post by jadar »

I forsook RN years ago. I am not a huge fan of the JavaScript ecosystem in the first place, and the UX of RN apps is not the best. Instead, I adopted Kotlin Multiplatform (shortly after their memory management overhaul). I haven't been disappointed. As coding agents have come along, they are really good at writing both Swift and Kotlin, and I get to write all the business logic once. UI can either be shared with CMP, which is quite good, or platform-specific.

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

#476

Post by fishfasell »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #471
Waterluvian wrote: post #28

If you put every company that needs/has an app on a spectrum, there is a line somewhere that roughly divides them into two groups: where Electron/React Native/etc. makes sense or not. It's just a normal engineering decision: solving problems given limited resources. Companies have different problems and different resources. I think people in the tech community have probably also noticed that it's rather popular to ha…

I think this is something we’ll see AI very meaningfully impact — the threshold needed for “Get this thing working on a tech stack we might not be familiar with” has gone waaaaaaay down.

It's worrying to say the least. Today it's "get this working", tomorrow it's "can it also do XYZ?", next week it's "we have a 40% spike in crashes, you MUST resolve this IMMEDIATELY!"

Meanwhile the devs are furiously asking AI how to fix it, every flavor of every model will give you a different diagnosis, GH Copilot will throw a million high/critical at you, and you still have no idea if it's fixed or not.

It's the exact reason why you still need to know the languages you're using despite what leadership/product teams demand.

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

#477

Post by petegleeson »

Surely the decision comes down to whether they have the expertise to build native apps.

I know JS and I know models still write a lot of garbage JS. I don’t know Swift so a model writing Swift all LTGM. Garbage is still there, I just can’t see it.

The solve isn’t another agentic harness. I need to learn more.

Lots of faster/cheaper justifications. I believe that part. If the quality bar is “web devs prompt models” then that’s a worry.

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

#478

Post by skydhash »

nfw2 wrote: post #405
skydhash wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is in the product and organizational challenges of keeping those two products that need to be identical in sync. They're two different platforms where the capabilities and UI patterns differs, so I don't see why they should be in sync. The web platform is not in sync with them. And using native features can give you a nice boost in maintenance and speed, unlike React Native where you always needs to align librar…

The capabilities of Android and iOS don't meaningfully differ for the purposes of Shopify; Shopify doesn't need LIDAR. Most large brands throw the UI design patterns of the platforms out the window in favor of their own UI guidelines. Saying the web platform is not in sync with mobile is not a relevant metaphor to justify why Android and iOS should be considered separately.

They vary in terms of architectural patterns and ui widgets. RN tries to prevent a single interface, but you quickly reach the point where it becomes a pain. You can use Expo to help, but their libraries are unstable.

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

#479

Post by ernsheong »

It seems like Shopify has fallen into a trap thinking that more complexity costs nothing because of AI. In the age of AI we have to embrace the same principle as before that complexity needs to be tamed, not multiplied. Even as humans struggled with complexity, from what I see now AI struggles very much the same. Hence I don't think this will age well.
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