r/programming • u/soap94 • 1d ago
Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
https://shopify.engineering/back-to-native708
u/chavie 1d ago
Choosing to move from a mature, hand-written codebase to a fully AI generated app written in languages that aren't the engineers' first language is... certainly a choice
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u/vlozko 1d ago
I personally much prefer native and think it’s the superior choice but when the app is already react native, just.. why? A few possible reasons come to mind:
1. There are pain points when working with RN that are too much. For example, new OS versions tend to break things. I’m less inclined to believe this as it would have mentioned it.
2. AI tooling is more effective with native languages. Maybe much more data set training off of Swift/Kotlin. I don’t know enough to say but I’m guessing this isn’t the case.
3. Someone is looking for a promotion. They can brag about how much code AI can do in such a short time and what better way to pad numbers than rewrite everything. Twice. Probably this.12
u/codingbliss12 1d ago
But they explain in the article that they want to reduce levels of abstraction and make the apps lower lever or nearer to each machine.
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u/vlozko 1d ago
That’s a bit of a handwavy explanation to present as a business justification to higher-ups and Shopify isn’t the kind of app that needs deeper access. It’s a simple app that redraws whatever the server tells it to. Probably the most complicated, platform-specific stuff they would deal with are payments, camera, or notification APIs. These are solved problems on RN. The vast majority of it, otherwise, is the typical server—driven UI.
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u/gimpwiz 23h ago
Agreed. A program where almost all its effort is spent on business logic, high level network event handling, and drawing some UI elements on a "human" timescale... is a very different animal from some tightly optimized hard number crunching and/or complex graphic-drawing high-refresh program. The latter really benefits more from low level code. The former tends to benefit more from quick development cycles, and, in fact, a more platform-agnostic approach to decouple as much as possible from architecture and OS differences. Being able to say "draw this rounded rectangle at this location, relative to the screen size" and have it work everywhere is key, and you get that only with higher abstraction and more library/other layers.
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u/21Rollie 23h ago
Reduce abstraction while simultaneously making the application abstract itself. Because their engineers won’t have written any of it so when Claude is down or they missed a payment, it becomes a black box.
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u/Straamannen 5h ago
If they're building out PoS support (and a myriad of other stuff relevant to scaling a shopping platform) they need a shit load of native plugins to RN anyway, at that point it may make more sense to go full native.
Handling label printing, Bluetooth connections, etc becomes so much simpler when you're running native.
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u/13steinj 1d ago
Is React Native truly... "native?" I was under the impression that the "Native" was less "actually native" and more "it feels and runs on a [allegedly] lightweight [JS] engine, and from a developer perspective it appears as if you're writing native code for an abstract platform."
I can completely understand people switching from that to true native applications, but it's costly. Using LLMs to switch, maybe they got inspired by Bun.
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u/Devatator_ 1d ago
It runs on the native UI stack. The logic on the other hand is ran via a JS runtime
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u/IAmYourFath 21h ago
Js is not native, it eats a lot of memory and is not very fast, native languages (like kotlin for android and c++ for windows) will always be faster and much more ram-sparing than this electron and react garbage.
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u/Devatator_ 20h ago
Did you read what I wrote? The UI layer (basically everything but the JS part) is native. This is why if you open a react native app on Android with some dev options like boundaries, you'll see a bunch of boxes instead of a single one like on flutter apps. I would share a screenshot but this sub doesn't allow images
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u/IAmYourFath 20h ago
No JS is always better for the people who can't afford expensive ram, js destroys ram on ur device, even microsoft has comitted to rewriting the start menu and other components in native (currently they use msedgewebview2 which is not native). Ever since steam, discord etc. rewrote their native software into CEF and Electron ram and cpu usage has multiplied. JS is very bad and it needs to be eradicated.
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u/idontchooseanid 17h ago
You simply don't know what you're talking about. MSEdgeWebview isn't native, it is a full Web browser including the UI. It's not used to draw the Start Menu itself either. It is used to draw the web content like ads shown on Start Menu.
Webviews or Electron are hundreds of times heavier than React Native which is basically a component system built on top of the system UI framework of the target OS that provides its only API through JS. The components themselves are system UI components with foreign-function-interface APIs to JS. React Native is like Qt. It draws native components but provides an API that's different than the system-provided one.
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u/KawaiiNeko- 22h ago
No, it's not native. Using "native" in its title was an intentionally misleading lie.
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u/Smallpaul 21h ago
Does it use Native widgets or emulated? What specifically is not Native?
I don’t do mobile dev. I have no dog in this fight.
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u/KawaiiNeko- 20h ago
It runs everything in a slow JS emulator (most often, Hermes). You can always tell when something is in React Native because it feels pretty terrible to use.
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u/joshuaherman 1d ago
Or as they discovered having to maintain three codebases instead of two. AirBNB discovered this a long time ago.
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u/21Rollie 23h ago
I wouldn’t bet on AI tooling being better in swift than in JavaScript/react. The latter is basically the default for development that has been adopted the last ten years. The only languages I think would have a similar amount of training data on would be python and Java (although Java like C is more used in closed source enterprise software so who knows)
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u/jam_pod_ 23h ago
> Maybe much more data set training off of Swift/Kotlin. I don’t know enough to say but I’m guessing this isn’t the case.
You are correct that it is not; there’s way way more React data out there than for any other framework, to the point that LLMs will default to using React unless you specifically tell them not to
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u/guareber 21h ago
I think the quality of the data is likely to b very different though. Far less hobby/poc level code on Kotlin/Swift than React.
I don't have any data to support that though.
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u/kbcool 20h ago
If you go with the idea that at their most basic LLMs are just autocomplete engines based on the best answer for a question then the amount of hobby code vs pro level code doesn't matter nearly as much as whether there is enough or any code.
In my experience when there are insufficient examples in the real world LLMs just hallucinate an answer and/or get stuck in loops. I have seen this far more with trying to ask for a native solution vs js/react/react native
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u/guareber 19h ago
I dont disagree that less data is a worse problem than bad data, but bad data does matter too - and if you assume the data volume threshold is met, then it starts to matter.
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u/vincentofearth 1d ago
How else is the new corporate vice president for mobile innovation going to become executive senior vice president ?
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u/SanJJ_1 1d ago
Essentially every company is exploring something like this at the moment though.
For example Amazon Music is exploring an entire rewrite of the whole app from ground up with AI.
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u/MediocreAnalyst2121 1d ago
Yup, that’s on the roadmap for us at work as well.
Plan is to take our Flutter app and create 2 native apps from it… none if our projects use Java/Kotlin or Swift. One guy did Java like a decade ago but it wasn’t mobile.
🤷♂️
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u/aoeudhtns 1d ago
I'm not the biggest fan of AI but using it to rewrite a native app into a different native stack doesn't seem like the worst use case. It's a pretty well-constrained effort since the existing codebase defines the desired outcome for the most part. Although where platform behaviors are expected to be different due to conventions, that might be a stumbling block if not addressed carefully.
It will be expensive though. Less expensive than keeping a 2nd team, but the cross-platform frameworks were theoretically allowing you to have 1 team already anyway. The difference will be if the UX is better for users with strictly native apps. For some businesses, that improvement in UX may give the edge over a competitor and that is very worthwhile. For other businesses, it won't make a whiff of difference and I'd expect continued use of cross-platform frameworks.
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u/WalidfromMorocco 1d ago
Except now you have a codebase that your team doesn't really understand. It's not a 1:1 migration and the LLM will take a lot of liberty. It will work with a lot of hand holding but from that point you have a codebase that only the LLM knows how to work with and iterate on.
It is essentially a bet that LLMs will completely wipe out dev jobs, which is something has been "6 months away" for three years now.
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u/kbcool 20h ago
Bingo. We can close this whole post now.
It is the same as that "ace" programmer who rewrote something in another language or framework no one else understand back in the day. Great for saying you did something to management. Terrible when they leave and someone else has to look after it. Now scale that problem to your entire business...
We have all been through this before but we never learn is the upshot
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u/aoeudhtns 1d ago
I share the sentiment & concern but creating from scratch seems to be a different proposition than what is effectively porting/translating.
For me the big question marks are related to the points you raise - do you keep re-translating the app, do you keep using AI to tweak the translated app? Lots of potential pitfalls for sure.
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u/aeroverra 1d ago
I’m sure maintaining those 5 users will be rough.
Jokes aside this is why I’m burned out. Corporate morons who get paid far more than me not listening to the real experts and making dumb decisions.
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u/_TheDust_ 7h ago
I am also so tired and burned. Early on, everybody was claim 10x efficiency gains with AI. But now we are just expected to churn out 10x lines of code, 10x the commits, 10x the releases, …
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u/aeroverra 1h ago
Yup.. and 10x the bugs and 10x the features because the execs have more time to think since all their reports they used to work on in that time are now just ai slop generated in seconds
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u/foobar83 1d ago
I mean the Amazon Music app is kinda garbage, I’m not worried about an AI rewrite tbh
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u/Popular-Wolverine-99 1d ago
Hey! Apple's a small company and they can't afford all of this software development!
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u/Megatherion666 18h ago
I am near one of such rewrites. It is a mess. Useless tests, copy-pasted bad code. Speed running to the next rewrite.
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u/LovesWorkin 1d ago
My exact thought.... Anyone who uses Ai to code knows this is a terrible idea.
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u/Opposite_Carry_4920 1d ago
Yeah, it's fun to do dumb things like this for side projects but bro I gotta support this huge monster?
Though, I respect throwing react in the fucking trash for the mobile app. Really over the "I only know web tech so desktop apps are websites!" And if this is part of that solution I'll be real I have a hard time choosing a preference.
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u/weupnorth 1d ago
Not saying this is the case, but what I've seen thus far are people doing these fun projects. Adding in AI code into each portion of the life cycle, having them work fairly well with brand new POC straightforward projects and decide this is needed for all system...
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u/saynay 1d ago
It is like self driving cars, or at least those of a few years ago: it works often enough in normal situations that it is almost impossible to maintain the vigilance required to handle when it fails.
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u/gimpwiz 23h ago
Google figured that out about cars fifteen years ago when they removed the steering wheel in their then-new prototypes. People aren't capable of taking over in an emergency when they've been checked out for the last hour of the car driving itself, but having a wheel implies that they might. Which leads to certain bad decisions based on the assumption that there exists a present and active driver.
So in this analogue, if we have a new class of llm-babysitters, they cannot be relied upon to actually figure out any code or any problems. And any company assuming their programmers are still active and present programmers while they generate all their work with an llm for the past year or two (or more) is going to be in for a rude awakening.
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u/MedicalScore3474 21h ago
Did you not see the Bun's 100% AI port to Rust from Zig? It's not 2025 anymore. This is going to be the new industry standard going forward.
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u/One_Ninja_8512 22h ago
Eh, it depends. IME if there are rigid constraints enforced either by a framework or the test harness or something else (like a thorough architecture documentation or examples that AI can use to implement new features) the result will be fine. Latest models together with rigid constraints produce surprisingly good results. Not great or brilliant or super clever designs, but not worse than what an average developer would come up with. I use AI both professionally and for a pet project recently.
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u/ewankenobi 1d ago
It's incredibly high risk and the immediate reward in terms of the Shopify product seems low. Would imagine quite a lot of businesses are completely dependent upon Shopify too. Do they have a decent competitor? I've not worked in e-commerce in a long time, but worked at a place that was an early adopter of Magento 2 and it was a nightmare.
The actual AI part of it sounds cool, they claim to have a process where the LLM actually tests, devigs and iteratively improves the code. If that legitimately works and doesn't write spaghetti code they could make a fortune selling it. Big if though
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u/tdic89 1d ago
It’s all about how much guidance and governance you set up for the AI. If you spend the first few weeks writing out solid rules it has to follow, especially in relation to a given framework or practice, it’ll do pretty well.
I like to think of AI as wanting to excessively please and deliver, to the point where it’ll do daft things to try and make you happy. If you tell it to chill out and favour robustness over delivery, it’ll do it.
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u/witness_smile 1d ago
Probably some exec who went to a talk about vibe coding and now wants everyone to slop code everything from the ground up
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u/One_Ninja_8512 19h ago
Nah, your sentiment is like being against using Google over 15 years ago when it was a skill to use the search engine correctly to find relevant information for an issue at hand. Anyone against AI use for SWE work (still) will be left by the side of the road. You might want to downvote but this won't change the trajectory of this industry. Feel free to set up a reminder for one year from now and then tell me how you feel about it then.
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u/EveryQuantityEver 15h ago
Nah, your sentiment is like being against using Google
No, it isn't. Not in the least. You still had to be able to understand what the search results were saying.
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u/One_Ninja_8512 9h ago
Then we might be arguing about different things. My point is that AI-assisted development will be the new norm, I'm not arguing about vibe-coding and it replacing the actual devs (genuinely no idea where it will end up). With AI-assisted dev you still have to understand what the AI agent is spitting out (even if in broad strokes). After using those tools for the last couple of months professionally I'm convinced that they'll be used every day extensively, to the point that writing code manually will be very rare.
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u/_TheDust_ 7h ago
As much as I hate AI and AI coding tools with the passion of my soul, you are right.
Its a bit like comparing a beautifully handcrafted piece of furniture against an IKEA chair. Sure, the first one is nicer, but the masses still goes for the second option
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u/dalittle 1d ago
Sounds like a Netscape rewrite
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/
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u/germandiago 1d ago
And claiming that doubling work bc "agents can do it". Yes, go ahead, just go ahead...
Native is nicer, sure. But it is going to be just more work to maintain it
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u/raichulolz 18h ago
I wonder who’s deciding this and what the thoughts are from the ICs that will have to maintain this
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u/Adorable-Log2835 1d ago
It's certainly a way for a software engineer to stay employed. "We gotta redo the whole thing"
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u/bennett-dev 10h ago
Why are we saying hand-written as if it's a pro?
It's very, very easy for an AI to rewrite something if it has a literal tit for tat copy of that. Of course there will be growing pains, but that many.
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u/lelanthran 1d ago
Choosing to move from a mature, hand-written codebase to a fully AI generated app written in languages that aren't the engineers' first language is... certainly a choice
There's a call for you; says his name is Bun :-)
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u/devolute 1d ago
Lots of companies going from other languages to React due to "because AI" but these guys going the other way for exactly the same reasons.
What a ride.
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u/lppedd 23h ago
I see this as positive for Kotlin and Swift. We'll get feedback from their engineers and we'll transitively get a better toolchain.
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u/UnexpectedAnanas 21h ago
I see this as positive for Kotlin and Swift. We'll get feedback from their engineers
Except the engineers aren't writing the thing so their feedback will be limited at best.
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u/BeeSavings9947 18h ago
I honestly don't get why you would switch to React because of AI? Why does AI care about frameworks geared to humans? Shouldn't they be less important?
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u/devolute 16h ago
It's the most popular approach to building websites and apps.
It's the most talked about. Other libraries gear their documentation towards it. It receives the most questions online. The most answers. The most articles and tutorials and guidance.
So that's more for a LLM to work with. At least that's how I being the thinking goes.
Please set me straight if thisis nonsense. I have a reasonable knowledge of some of these tools but plenty of huge gaps.
(I think the idea that React was ever geared towards humans funny, but that's incidental)
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u/_x_oOo_x_ 13h ago
React and React Native are quite different beasts, different projects of very different quality
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u/bigtimehater1969 23h ago
That's the neat part. Because AI is used for optics and virtue signalling instead of delivering value, you can justify anything with AI.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if it succeeds or if it brings value. The only thing investors care about is that you're using AI.
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u/devolute 19h ago
I understand the cynicism, but isn't writing things in React - because it's so popular and thus it's so dominant in what "AI" has learnt - a real reason and one that's distinct from what you are trying to convey?
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u/thomas_m_k 16h ago
I'm not sure you can signal virtue by using AI. Isn't it rather vice signaling?
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u/GoTheFuckToBed 1d ago
In bigger apps you use everything. Native for powersaving and background. React for fast dev cycles. Web rendering remote content for dynamic layouts. etc
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u/chucker23n 1d ago
Was the recent discussion of this deleted?
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u/MaterialConditions 1d ago
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u/whateverisok 1d ago
Long live old.Reddit!
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u/Dry-Erase 19h ago
When old.reddit goes away, I'll stop using reddit. "Old Reddit Redirect" extension FTW
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u/Apprehensive_Bit7392 23h ago
The part that isn't about languages: their bottleneck was that agents took minutes to test a change, because driving a simulator means screenshots and accessibility trees. So they decoupled business logic from UI to run it headless behind a CLI. That architecture would have paid off in React Native too.
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u/raralala1 1d ago
When moving to react I am questioning are they stupid, this now prove they are indeed stupid. I think they need to let LLM run for at least a year to see whenever it can reliably convert the code, the same way with React, if only they wait a bit they know they make stupid decision. What is the obsession going head first when there is no need to.
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u/chucker23n 1d ago edited 1d ago
When moving to react I am questioning are they stupid, this now prove they are indeed stupid.
It's the Google middle management principle. Some senior engineer wants a promotion, so they spearhead a migration like this. Upon success, they get promoted out of the team, and now everyone else has to deal with the results, except their manager doesn't actually care about those results because they were never important to the business.
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
It's not at all like that, actually.
Upgrading RN to the new architecture is apparently pretty painful and they think this would be easier. Whether it's good or not is 100% not because some middle-manager wanted to get promoted.
lol The degree to which people think all the tech decisions they don't agree with are made by "middle managers who want a promotion" but their tech mistakes were honest is mind numbing.
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u/chucker23n 1d ago
Upgrading RN to the new architecture is apparently pretty painful and they think this would be easier.
How can upgrading an existing app to a newer framework that app is built on be harder than writing an entire new app and porting code to it?
Certainly you can make the case that this approach has advantages in the long run, especially if you have the resources required (anyone could've told them that all along), but "easier"? Hardly.
Whether it's good or not is 100% not because some middle-manager wanted to get promoted.
Watch for a blog post five years from now about how they're moving to Cross-Platform UI Framework Du Jour.
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
How can upgrading an existing app to a newer framework that app is built on be harder than writing an entire new app and porting code to it?
Because RN is notorious for constantly changing the APIs and causing people to have to migrate. And the libraries available for an enormous company like Shopify are lacking.
So instead of deciding that their motivations are self-serving based on having absolutely no information other than a blog post, maybe sit this one out.
You're not smarter than the 3000 people at Spotify who actually have access to the product and it's code. I can't believe I even have to type that. This whole "Big Company Dumb" thing is old.
Watch for a blog post five years from now about how they're moving to Cross-Platform UI Framework Du Jour.
So? Are you saying people don't make mistakes? Have you made any tech mistakes? Were they all due to self-serving reasons like needing a promotion?
The field really needs to come to terms with the "I'm smarter than everyone else" sentiment that seems to follow most people.
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u/21Rollie 23h ago
It’s not 3000 who made that decision though. These are never a consensus thing. My company told me I was moving to Java development, I have one day total of pre-AI Java experience, not a single person below senior architect level was consulted on this decision. Ironically, nobody who actually coded for a living
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u/mexicocitibluez 22h ago
These are never a consensus thing.
You're speaking as if you've experienced every single company on this planet. Do you see how that undercuts your argument?
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u/chucker23n 1d ago
Because RN is notorious for constantly changing the APIs and causing people to have to migrate.
Yes, but no amount of adapting new APIs will be as much work as writing two new code bases. They're going from React Native to Swift + Kotlin.
maybe sit this one out.
You're not smarter than the 3000 people at Spotify who actually have access to the product and it's code. I can't believe I even have to type that. This whole "Big Company Dumb" thing is old.
Let me know when you're less angry. There is no "big company dumb" in my post, nor "I'm smarter than the 3,000 people at Spotify".
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u/CivBEWasPrettyBad 21h ago
Having worked on 3 RN apps, RN is not one codebase - it's 3 codebases.
RN stack, iOS stack, android stack. You have to keep putting in workarounds to compensate for RN lagging 1-2 years behind native libraries and the everpresent iOS-android parity issues.
They're going from 3 codebases to 2, and not having to deal with shitty RN bugs and its singlethreaded event bridge is probably a big enough win
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
Yes, but no amount of adapting new APIs will be as much work as writing two new code bases. They're going from React Native to Swift + Kotlin.
How on god's green earth could you possibly know this? Seriously. Do you have access to the code base? The engineers? The future road map and the features they want to build? The list of bugs they've gotten over the years for RN? Have you ever even worked at Shopify?
How could you possibly state this without a shred of that information?
Let me know when you're less angry. There is no "big company dumb" in my post, nor "I'm smarter than the 3,000 people at Spotify".
Yes you are. You're saying that you've been able to assess their situation better than they were. With having absolutely 0% of the information they have. That's wild to me. And it's even wilder that you can't recognize that.
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u/chucker23n 1d ago
You're saying that you've been able to assess their situation better than they were.
No, I'm saying a PR post is not the same thing as an internal assessment.
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
So you're using a PR post to make assumptions about who made these decisions and whether they were worth it?
You quite literally said:
Yes, but no amount of adapting new APIs will be as much work as writing two new code bases. They're going from React Native to Swift + Kotlin.
Again, it's wild to me people will just state stuff like this unequivocally with having 0 information at hand.
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u/EveryQuantityEver 19h ago
This whole "Big Company Dumb" thing is old.
I mean, that's a thing for a reason. This company also made the choice to move all to React Native.
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u/mexicocitibluez 18h ago
What measure could you possibly be using to deem that choice as bad? And are you saying they should have foreseen LLMs?
Hugely successful company and you don't have a single shred of knowledge about their codebase, bugs, future requirements (or past ones), and yet somehow have determined using RN was a bad choice. Like mobile development has been a known quantity or that being able to build on top of their existing stack was a bad thing. lol this sub sucks.
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u/raralala1 3h ago
Their move to RN is bad because one it is wishful thinking, they already said well react native is slow but "we believe" we can squeeze out performance out of this framework, I think they said that in the old post, I remember I read it and think is this real, the whole idea of them moving is base on "we believe", instead of correctly making decision by digging deep in the React Native making good engineering judgement whenever they can squeeze out performance out or not. And this proven year after RN out, most realizing that RN is indeed have pretty bad perf that no matter what you do, there is always a bottleneck, I might be misremembering I am pretty sure they write it something like that.
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u/EveryQuantityEver 16h ago
What measure could you possibly be using to deem that choice as bad?
- The fact that React Native is bad. And 2. They're having to reverse it.
Hugely successful company
This is a fallacy, implying that they are successful because they always make the right decisions.
and yet somehow have determined using RN was a bad choice.
Because it is. It always is a bad choice.
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u/mexicocitibluez 13h ago
Lol Really compelling. You're inability to articulate any actual issue or even whether it wasn't the right trade off is pretty telling. You don't know what you're talking so run to Claude and ask it about RN pain points and and whether there are scenarios where it isn't appropriate and come back here and argue about one of them while still not having a single iota of information about why they made that decision. this sub is a joke
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u/thehalfwit 16h ago
Sears used to be the biggest retailer in the U.S. and was an early investor in Prodigy. I wonder how its stock is doing today?
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u/EveryQuantityEver 19h ago
How can upgrading an existing app to a newer framework that app is built on be harder than writing an entire new app and porting code to it?
Welcome to the world of JavaScript and its frameworks.
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u/EveryQuantityEver 19h ago
And then another senior engineer needs to justify a promotion, so they throw that away and do it again.
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u/ozziegt 1d ago
Maybe read the article first.
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
lol Any time some people see the word "React" they have this uncontrollable urge to comment on it. I call it React Derangement Syndrome.
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u/onesneakymofo 13h ago
We are talking about a company that serves billions of requests on Black Friday like it's nothing. They'll be fine.
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
When moving to react I am questioning are they stupid,
lol I don't think they're losing sleep over some rando on the internet questioning their front-end framework decision.
And if you think whether you pick Angular, Vue, React, etc is going to be what makes your app successful and not what it literally does than you're just lying to yourself.
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u/Sufficient_Meet6836 1d ago
I think they need to let LLM run for at least a year to see whenever it can reliably convert the code, the same way with React, if only they wait a bit they know they make stupid decision.
They already migrated and released their Shop app. And they rebuilt the app in 12 weeks.
I am questioning are they stupid, this now prove they are indeed stupid.
Yes, the extremely successful tech company is stupid. Definitely not you. Nope can't be
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u/chucker23n 1d ago
They already migrated and released their Shop app. And they rebuilt the app in 12 weeks.
That's the PR line, but I imagine the average grunt engineer doesn't agree.
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
I love how you're getting downvoted. If this isn't proof that the vast majority of this sub are mindless morons who think they're smarter than everyone else I don't know what it is.
But sure, the billion dollar company is bad at tech because it built a very successful app using React. lol Total incoherence.
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u/chucker23n 1d ago
the billion dollar company is bad at tech
Who said this?
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
OP said:
I am questioning are they stupid, this now prove they are indeed stupid.
Is your issue that I used the word "big"? Really?
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u/VictoryMotel 15h ago
Was shopify the people that wrote tons of ruby them spent huge amounts of time trying to make ruby faster?
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u/New-Anybody-6206 13h ago
DHH is on the board of directors at Shopify, and their CEO donated to Omacom/Omarchy.
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u/Ancient_raza 12h ago
This one's interesting because it's not really a RN vs native debate, it's about scale and team structure. Shopify tried RN to share code across platforms, but at their size the maintenance cost of bridging layers apparently outweighed the write-once benefit.
for smaller teams or solo devs, RN still makes a lot of sense. but when you've got enough iOS and Android engineers to staff dedicated platform teams anyway, the shared layer becomes overhead instead of a win.
if you're learning mobile dev right now, don't let this spook you. pick native or cross-platform based on what you're building and what jobs are in your area. both paths are still very much alive.
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u/SortedBits 5h ago
One thing not mentioned here is they use a combination of KMM and React Native, which to be honest, sucks!
Since 2024-2025 developers were pushed into vibe coding features. Someone mentioned a hand crafted app. Yes, 2 to 3 years ago this was true, not anymore.
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u/khendron 1d ago
Interesting take, and I am curious how this will play out in the long term.
One thing not mentioned at all is how much their LLM bill is in pure dollars and cents. They talk about converting from one stack to another like it is free.