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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

#521

Post by whatsThisBtn4 »

fourside wrote: post #67
atonse wrote: post #31

We did the same thing - had 90% of it overnight. Then spent a few days in the background tweaking for polish. Our app is smaller, and has about 15-20 screens. I started at about 12:30am by giving codex a goal and it inventoried every screen based on the react native code, then created android and iOS directories, used maestro (I had already set up this tooling for a previous personal app build a few weeks prior), and…

How are you evaluating the Android build if you don’t use Android and you don’t know Kotlin?

ITT: people dealing with realities.

Remember Chinese accounts on US Facebook say data centers are bad.

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

#522

Post by hectdev »

colesantiago wrote: post #518
hectdev wrote: post #506

Earlier 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.

> 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 b…

Yea, I hear that. I'm content with winning the argument and truthfully, I think they will find they need to hire iOS engineers because we do more than write Swift. There are whole ecosystems of knowledge to go from a product idea, sit in meetings with many stakeholders, and implement the actual thing everyone wants. All they got here was a 1-to-1 implementation of their current app which was born of engineers working through real constraints. It says nothing of new features that have to play nice with other pillars of the company.

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

#526

Post by colesantiago »

hectdev wrote: post #522
colesantiago wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 b…

Yea, I hear that. I'm content with winning the argument and truthfully, I think they will find they need to hire iOS engineers because we do more than write Swift. There are whole ecosystems of knowledge to go from a product idea, sit in meetings with many stakeholders, and implement the actual thing everyone wants. All they got here was a 1-to-1 implementation of their current app which was born of engineers working…

> I think they will find they need to hire iOS engineers because we do more than write Swift.

Shopify isn't hiring any mobile engineers.

Probably because the agents were hired first and took the job already.

That is the point of the job being literally commoditized and cannibalised, they hire less or close to 0.

Your quixotic 'vindication' means nothing and has the opposite effect.

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

#528

Post by hermitwriter »

hectdev wrote: post #509
dopamean wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Derp. Read it again.

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

#529

Post by mrr7337 »

dools wrote: post #511

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.

Not enough community around it. Shopify would have to pioneer a lot more than they would like to get it working for their use case.

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

#530

Post by hermitwriter »

hectdev wrote: post #505
ajross wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd challenge you to determine which of the top app store(s) apps are react native vs not -- plenty of app store awards have gone to react native apps -- bad software is bad software. plenty of you ios devs write shit software. I've done this job almost 40 years and no language or platform has ever prevented people from building shitty software or for that matter gotten in the way of writing good software. good engineers can figure it out.

source: ios dev since it was possible -- I am not even pro react native, I am just pro merit based arguments -- you aren't making any

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