6 ms·

There seems to be a disconnect between what Shopify do internally and what they ask of their users. With Hydrogen and now Remix you would think they have their

by jspash 4y ago

There seems to be a disconnect between what Shopify do internally and what they ask of their users. With Hydrogen and now Remix you would think they have their sh*t together. But when the official docs recommend that you inline jquery click handlers for a simple adjustment to their shop, I just don't know what to think. All in all the Shopify dev experience for me is on par with Wordpress. I hold my nose and cash the cheques. Then hurriedly leave the premises in a long trench coat with my hat pulled down to avoid being recognised.

theturtletalks 4y ago
They have a perfectly good Storefront API that allows you to build any storefront. We use Shopify with Next.js and if we ever wanted to switch platforms, we would just change the API calls and keep the same frontend.
dmix 4y ago
There's often a disconnect between the technical staff who write customer-facing documentation vs the backend engineering teams. Often the technical writers will be working closely with real customers. The customers will come to them 90% of the time with hacky custom jQuery stores + the support staff won't be highly skilled Front-end engineers (usually a junior-dev grasp of JS/web dev).
- leviathant 4y ago
  Shopify likes to brag about having 4,000 developers. Given the output of the company - that comes across to me as bloat.
  - dewey 4y ago
    Judging the visible output as a metric for how many developers a company needs is very naive. Think about the teams that don't directly interact with the outside like infrastructure, business intelligence, hiring (onboarding tools), internal tooling, all the work they do on Ruby (https://shopify.engineering/shopify-ruby-at-scale-research-investment https://shopify.engineering/shopify-ruby-at-scale-research-i...).
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      Shopify probably employs many devs whose job is likely to pretty much operate as consultants for some of their larger customers.
Existenceblinks 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they swap out liquid and its json based layout config .. despite they keep saying everything is doing great. New gen developer probably got gaslit by React vibe and demands change (admittedly I made this shit up)
- btown 4y ago
  This acquisition is very much in the context of https://hydrogen.shopify.dev/roadmap/#first-quarter https://hydrogen.shopify.dev/roadmap/#first-quarter and https://github.com/Shopify/hydrogen https://github.com/Shopify/hydrogen - Shopify very much wants to move to the modern era. And to address your point, it's not gaslighting to say that React enables interactions that would be essentially impossible if restricted to server-side templating. But there's certainly some degree to which trendiness and a desire to attract developers into their ecosystem is driving this as well.
  - Existenceblinks 4y ago
    Remix approach which is Shopify is going with is having data loader code separated from client side code. So it could be .. Solid.js or vanilla.js that enables the interaction part. It's always has been this way, this time it's just writing html renderer in js.
- BryanBeshore 4y ago
  FWIW: Tobi mentioned that if he had to do it all over again, he would still build the admin and business logic of Shopify in Ruby on Rails, but would probably build their liquid rendering in Rust or something like it https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1585459224506671104?s=20&t=0V3U4MDFfXKWUzMTIH-X-g https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1585459224506671104?s=20&t=0...
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    Probably only because that's what he's familiar with. Rails has the most ubiquitous scale problems that large co's keep migrating away from, and new devs are trending away from it. Shopify investing into the JS/TS backend world is just another domino falling of Ruby/Rails descending into Perl-like prevalence.
dubcanada 4y ago
Why do you feel that way? What is wrong with a quick inline jquery click handler? What part of web development requires webpack + react + tailwindcss + a bunch of random packages that provide 1 function? Sometimes people just want to get stuff done, and doing a simple $('.cart').on('click', () => {}); does the job. If you want to get fancy as another user posted, use the full API suite and do it all yourself. It's robust and rather friendly to integrate with.
- melony 4y ago
  Nothing wrong with it but it doesn't make for coherent documentation. For a plugin-centric company like Shopify where third party integrations are crucial to its business model, you would expect more hand holding and better quality in its documentation. Their docs for common use cases like jquery and react/vue/svelte should be clearly laid out. Shopify seems to be an incoherent mess right now with poor engineering management. The stories that I am hearing are that a third of their engineering workforce consist of interns and the other third consist of juniors. They have very few engineering seniors and staffs, relative to most companies of their scale and market cap.
- enumjorge 4y ago
  If the argument is for minimalism, why use jQuery when vanilla JS suffices?
  - dirkg 4y ago
    because JQ is already loaded, and it IS minimal. You could do querySelector(...).addEventListener etc but why would you?
    - cobertos 4y ago
      Because you don't need another library to do it? Why load jQuery at all in 2022?
      - mritchie712 4y ago
mkl95 4y ago
Most places that employ rockstar frontend guys are like that. Management let them build their design systems and other cool stuff, but most of their backlog consists of new spaghetti on top of old spaghetti plus bug fixes. The cool stuff is used on greenfield projects.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by jspash 4y ago

theturtletalks 4y ago

They have a perfectly good Storefront API that allows you to build any storefront. We use Shopify with Next.js and if we ever wanted to switch platforms, we would just change the API calls and keep the same frontend.

dmix 4y ago

There's often a disconnect between the technical staff who write customer-facing documentation vs the backend engineering teams. Often the technical writers will be working closely with real customers. The customers will come to them 90% of the time with hacky custom jQuery stores + the support staff won't be highly skilled Front-end engineers (usually a junior-dev grasp of JS/web dev).

leviathant 4y ago
Shopify likes to brag about having 4,000 developers. Given the output of the company - that comes across to me as bloat.
- dewey 4y ago
  Judging the visible output as a metric for how many developers a company needs is very naive. Think about the teams that don't directly interact with the outside like infrastructure, business intelligence, hiring (onboarding tools), internal tooling, all the work they do on Ruby (https://shopify.engineering/shopify-ruby-at-scale-research-investment https://shopify.engineering/shopify-ruby-at-scale-research-i...).
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    Shopify probably employs many devs whose job is likely to pretty much operate as consultants for some of their larger customers.

Existenceblinks 4y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they swap out liquid and its json based layout config .. despite they keep saying everything is doing great. New gen developer probably got gaslit by React vibe and demands change (admittedly I made this shit up)

btown 4y ago
This acquisition is very much in the context of https://hydrogen.shopify.dev/roadmap/#first-quarter https://hydrogen.shopify.dev/roadmap/#first-quarter and https://github.com/Shopify/hydrogen https://github.com/Shopify/hydrogen - Shopify very much wants to move to the modern era. And to address your point, it's not gaslighting to say that React enables interactions that would be essentially impossible if restricted to server-side templating. But there's certainly some degree to which trendiness and a desire to attract developers into their ecosystem is driving this as well.
- Existenceblinks 4y ago
  Remix approach which is Shopify is going with is having data loader code separated from client side code. So it could be .. Solid.js or vanilla.js that enables the interaction part. It's always has been this way, this time it's just writing html renderer in js.
BryanBeshore 4y ago
FWIW: Tobi mentioned that if he had to do it all over again, he would still build the admin and business logic of Shopify in Ruby on Rails, but would probably build their liquid rendering in Rust or something like it https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1585459224506671104?s=20&t=0V3U4MDFfXKWUzMTIH-X-g https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1585459224506671104?s=20&t=0...
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  Probably only because that's what he's familiar with. Rails has the most ubiquitous scale problems that large co's keep migrating away from, and new devs are trending away from it. Shopify investing into the JS/TS backend world is just another domino falling of Ruby/Rails descending into Perl-like prevalence.

dubcanada 4y ago

Why do you feel that way? What is wrong with a quick inline jquery click handler? What part of web development requires webpack + react + tailwindcss + a bunch of random packages that provide 1 function? Sometimes people just want to get stuff done, and doing a simple $('.cart').on('click', () => {}); does the job. If you want to get fancy as another user posted, use the full API suite and do it all yourself. It's robust and rather friendly to integrate with.

melony 4y ago
Nothing wrong with it but it doesn't make for coherent documentation. For a plugin-centric company like Shopify where third party integrations are crucial to its business model, you would expect more hand holding and better quality in its documentation. Their docs for common use cases like jquery and react/vue/svelte should be clearly laid out. Shopify seems to be an incoherent mess right now with poor engineering management. The stories that I am hearing are that a third of their engineering workforce consist of interns and the other third consist of juniors. They have very few engineering seniors and staffs, relative to most companies of their scale and market cap.
enumjorge 4y ago
If the argument is for minimalism, why use jQuery when vanilla JS suffices?
- dirkg 4y ago
  because JQ is already loaded, and it IS minimal. You could do querySelector(...).addEventListener etc but why would you?
  - cobertos 4y ago
    Because you don't need another library to do it? Why load jQuery at all in 2022?
    - mritchie712 4y ago

mkl95 4y ago

Most places that employ rockstar frontend guys are like that. Management let them build their design systems and other cool stuff, but most of their backlog consists of new spaghetti on top of old spaghetti plus bug fixes. The cool stuff is used on greenfield projects.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]