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Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin

shopify.engineering

501–510 of 962 posts

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

#501
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sitting here at my desk overlooking Cordova Street. The street that Apache Cordova is named after. I've seen this debate for almost two decades now. The debate has been taking place on the actual street?

We practically heckled and threw rotten tomatoes across it at each other.

I’m curious who was across the street from whom, I’m assuming Nitobi was one.

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

#502
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if I’m an iOS user and used to that and you give me a conventional Android app UX, I’m going to feel that as jank. Same as if I’m an Android user and you give me the conventional iOS experience. It’s like if I gave a swing or Gtk+ or Xwindows app experience on Windows 11 or MacOS. It would be usable, but feel conspicuously sub-standard.

What specifically are the ux differences?

I'm only familiar with iOS and this is the type of question that an LLM could answer better than this specific human.

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

#503

As 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.

probably because every react native app they've used feels like shit

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

#504

As 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.

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 from that knows the ins and outs of the platform without needing to hire a developer to know all three- react, iOS, and Android.

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

#505
post #499

As 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…

My validation is that platform specific codebases is what is the right course of action. The c-level decision is that they want the cheapest route to consumers. My point is that consumers can tell, the product is better, and developers are happier working on native codebases.

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

#506

As 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.

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.

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

#507

As 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.

You should read the article. You'd realize that you're not actually vindicated by its contents.

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

#508
post #270
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there cybersecurity concerns in the frontend? I would have thought you have to assume the client is untrusted and only do security work on the backend

1. Not storing secrets properly or using hardcoded secrets 2. Wild use of webviews/iframes sometimes easily propagates as XSS in phones 3. Incorrect client-side OAuth 2.0 configuration e.g. with schema-based redirect URLs. 4. Not supporting high-enough API versions, which may prevent some OS-related weaknesses 5. The list is actually very long. Just few top of my mind.

Doing anything right on web is 10x harder and more complex. The problem is the browser, once you use it to deliver anything you have to buy into all of it’s bullshit. CORS, XSS, headers, caching. All that just goes away (outside your backend API, if you even need one) when you ship a native app

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

#509

As 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.

You should read the article. You'd realize that you're not actually vindicated by its contents.

I read it. They chose native over shared. Hence vindicated.

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

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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