Comment by canucker2016

The blog post doesn't mention the personnel-related challenges with having two native platform teams working on the app.

The post DOES give more information as to why they looked at switching from React Native to native Platform APIs.

React Native is forcing a major refactor of React Native apps in switching to the React Native "New Architecture" (see https://reactnative.dev/architecture/landing-page).

So if Shopify had to do major refactors of all their React Native apps, maybe they could look at what it would take to go back to native Platform APIs.

from https://shopify.engineering/shop-app-migration

  For the Shop App, this coincided with our next major React Native investment: adopting the New Architecture. That work would have required us to revisit native module integrations, rendering, and the boundaries between shared and platform-specific code. Before committing to this investment, we tested whether coding agents could help us build directly in SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose while keeping product behavior aligned across platforms.

The result of that native platform APIs side project involving six devs converting the app's major user workflows?

- startup time reduced: iOS by 23%, Android by 50%

- crashes - 10x reduction

- app size - iOS increased by 1MB (67MB -> 68MB), Android reduced by 109MB (37.2%)

- build time - Android release build time fell ~75%.

- runtime perf - Android builds could draw at 120fps while scrolling feed and switching screens