Comment by hectdev
11 hours ago
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.
11 hours ago
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.
> 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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Why would they need to worry about hiring for specific skills at all? As AI progresses, isn't the only skill that matters that you can drive it effectively (which encompasses testing and review) without needing oversight?
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> worked well for them
yeah because they don't care about a top notch user experience.
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.
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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.
You're looking at it from iOS side only, and for a US company that would be the last platform they'd ever drop.
It was a different picture out of the Apple garden, when a company only brings their next major feature to iOS because they couldn't be bothered to hire the same headcount on two development teams and their CEO uses an iPhone anyway.
We had that discussion about a decade ago with a company rep that didn't realize 70% of their EU users were on Android yet their play store app didn't have the feature they were planning to promote.
Basically, better was the enemy of good for most companies.
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We'll have to wait and see if the extra maintenance / bugs / attack surface is justified. This an announcement of future direction so vindicated is certainly premature.
They're right when it makes business sense, which is also about cost and why Shopify didn't do it before.
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In other words your team also resigned the next day ?
> 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 been commoditised and Shopify and others don't need to hire anymore native devs to find this out.
I don't see how your job being completely commoditised and cannibalised by LLMs replacing your job is some how vindication?
This is just like saying "we won the argument", but what did you actually "win"?
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probably because every react native app they've used feels like shit
I'm inclined to agree on certain points; true native apps are, generally speaking, better when it comes to e.g. customer experience. It comes with risks and costs (but I think the cost vs benefit is exaggerated) - risk being the ability to find good native developers, which aren't as common as e.g. web developers who can switch to RN fairly easily.
But there's a factor few people (that decide on using RN) miss; it adds a layer of indirection, so you're no longer as "in touch" with the underlying platform. While possible, few RN developers would consider adding widgets or smart watch apps to their main app, but (I feel like) if you're a native iOS developer who is all-in on the Apple ecosystem, you're more likely to try and adopt these features (where applicable).
(disclaimer: RN is my current day job, used to do native iOS development and I frequently miss it)
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 own the future right now (if, heh, not the agents themselves).
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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If only LLMs had been invented at the beginning of your career, you would have been right all along!
Same here. Glad I stuck with native iOS development. I still haven’t switched to SwiftUI though (except for some small stuff). Still sticking with UIKit here.
what they should've done is written logic etc.. in rust and use mobile app just for native layers, so they can still share code.
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