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2020-01-29: https://shopify.engineering/react-native-future-mobile-shopify https://shopify.engineering/react-native-future-mobile-shopi... ("After years of nati

2020-01-29: https://shopify.engineering/react-native-future-mobile-shopify https://shopify.engineering/react-native-future-mobile-shopi... ("After years of native mobile development, we’ve decided to go full steam ahead building all of our new mobile apps using React Native.") 2021-11-08: https://shopify.engineering/high-performance-hydrogen-powered-storefronts https://shopify.engineering/high-performance-hydrogen-powere... ("The future of commerce is dynamic, contextual, and personalized. Hydrogen is a React-based framework for building custom and creative storefronts powered by Shopify’s platform and APIs.") 2025-01-13: https://shopify.engineering/five-years-of-react-native-at-shopify https://shopify.engineering/five-years-of-react-native-at-sh... ("React Native has come a long way in the last 5 years and a lot of limitations that led people to not adopt it simply don’t exist anymore. If you haven’t tried using RN in a while, now would be a good time to revisit it.") 2025-09-05: https://shopify.engineering/react-native-new-architecture https://shopify.engineering/react-native-new-architecture ("We successfully migrated two of our largest apps, Shopify Mobile and Shopify Point of Sale (POS) to React Native's New Architecture") 2026-09-10: https://shopify.engineering/back-to-native https://shopify.engineering/back-to-native ("React Native was working well for us, and it remains an excellent framework. But since then, coding models have gotten dramatically better, and for our apps and our team, building the same feature in Swift and Kotlin no longer carries the cost it used to.") ^ to show the timeline of things.

nish__ 21d ago
Makes perfect sense.
_rwo 21d ago
ah yes, the classic full circle /remind me in 6 years about this thread
mrbombastic 21d ago
Seems a lot like the meme of the new designers pushing a redesign to justify their existence. To be less dismissive it seems an industry wide problem that big splashy projects get rewarded while the silent “Snow Leopard” mind numbingly obvious just up your quality and fix bugs and UX issues work goes unnoticed.
- ajam1507 21d ago
  If it ain't broke, fix it.
henryfjordan 21d ago
I don't understand the logic. AI vs Human development still have similar cost profiles. It costs $ per unit of thought (salary or tokens). If React Native worked well for human programmers, wouldn't it be just as good for AI?
- blackbrokkoli 21d ago
  here is a random example to showcase how this can make sense (I'm not too familiar with the actual stacks in questions): - stack A needs lots of tedious, not-quite boilerplate not-quite-copy-paste work whenever you implement something, but reduces cross-OS bugs, UX and accessibility issues down the line. Lots of dev frustration, slows down iteration (when humans actually have to do this). - stack B has awesome DX and affords smooth operation of the design/UX/dev teams, very fast. More issues down the line, though. May be worth it if unaided humans need to work on it.

nish__ 21d ago

Makes perfect sense.

_rwo 21d ago

ah yes, the classic full circle /remind me in 6 years about this thread

mrbombastic 21d ago

Seems a lot like the meme of the new designers pushing a redesign to justify their existence. To be less dismissive it seems an industry wide problem that big splashy projects get rewarded while the silent “Snow Leopard” mind numbingly obvious just up your quality and fix bugs and UX issues work goes unnoticed.

ajam1507 21d ago
If it ain't broke, fix it.

henryfjordan 21d ago

I don't understand the logic. AI vs Human development still have similar cost profiles. It costs $ per unit of thought (salary or tokens). If React Native worked well for human programmers, wouldn't it be just as good for AI?

blackbrokkoli 21d ago
here is a random example to showcase how this can make sense (I'm not too familiar with the actual stacks in questions): - stack A needs lots of tedious, not-quite boilerplate not-quite-copy-paste work whenever you implement something, but reduces cross-OS bugs, UX and accessibility issues down the line. Lots of dev frustration, slows down iteration (when humans actually have to do this). - stack B has awesome DX and affords smooth operation of the design/UX/dev teams, very fast. More issues down the line, though. May be worth it if unaided humans need to work on it.