Shopify moves back to Native from React Native

Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by wccrawford on Thursday September 10, 2026 @11:50AM (#49645801)

While I mostly agree with you, this is the kind of thing that might not have been done if the AI couldn't do the heavy lifting.

They had previously chosen React Native because it was easier for programmers to keep it updated, since it was really just 1 codebase. With AI, those same programmers can do the more difficult version, keeping the native apps updated separately.

So did it kill a job, or did it make it possible for the existing programmers to do it better?

It's the kind of thing that is really hard to determine in general, but here, it really does sound like they only made the change because it became possible with existing resources. They would not have done it otherwise.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by bgirard on Thursday September 10, 2026 @10:58PM (#49653038)

That's an example of AI growing the sector that can lead to more jobs. Because suddenly a lot of tasks that weren't economically viable are now going to be in demand. Custom software for small businesses, platform specific optimized code instead of cross platform software, etc...

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by aenis on Friday September 11, 2026 @10:37AM (#49659237)

In case of my company, the port was planned for this year, with a 9 month timeline and about 10 FTE team. It ended up being done in 3 months, with 2 engineers. (Sure, plus testers and internal bureaucracies, but that 2 FTE for 3 months vs. 10 FTE for 9 forecasted is apples-to-apples). Sure its eating up SWE jobs.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by mattm on Thursday September 10, 2026 @10:48AM (#49644697)

This is a type of project that likely wouldn't have been done before AI

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by eleventen on Thursday September 10, 2026 @11:10AM (#49645118)

Of course it would. Supply and demand. Some companies would decide not to bother. Others would decide it was worthwhile. The limited pool of supply (app developers) would be distributed across demand.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by enraged_camel on Thursday September 10, 2026 @11:50AM (#49645809)

>> Some companies would decide not to bother. Others would decide it was worthwhile.

The parent's point is that AI lowers the cost/benefit ratio drastically, by reducing the cost. So companies that would have shied away from projects like this pre-AI are now pulling the trigger without much hesitation.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by hamandcheese on Thursday September 10, 2026 @10:41PM (#49652941)

And what a lot of people seem to miss is that with AI, there is going to be (already is?) orders of magnitude more software in this world. I'm sure a lot of jobs will be eliminated, but new jobs will be created as well. Hopefully enough to balance things out, but we'll see.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by rrr_oh_man on Friday September 11, 2026 @01:17AM (#49653839)

> The parent's point is that AI lowers the cost/benefit ratio drastically, by reducing the cost.

…as long as Claude is still subsidized…

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by spiderice on Thursday September 10, 2026 @01:33PM (#49647452)

> Some companies would decide not to bother

Sounds like you agree

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by eleventen on Thursday September 10, 2026 @02:48PM (#49648528)

I agree that AI is suppressing developer wage growth and taking real jobs. The opposite argument is being made elsewhere in the thread, and I think that argument is wrong.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by augment_me on Thursday September 10, 2026 @10:51AM (#49644752)

This is an incredibly boring task. Nothing new, just rewrite everything to just see it all rewritten again in 1 year. Perfect for LLMs and something humans shouldn't do.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by cheema33 on Thursday September 10, 2026 @10:57AM (#49644854)

> This is an incredibly boring task.

We all want super exciting jobs. But plenty have boring jobs like this. Between not having a job or having a boring job that pays well, the choice is obvious for many of us.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by 8n4vidtmkvmk on Friday September 11, 2026 @02:38AM (#49654325)

Are you defending doing boring work?

I personally never minded doing migrations. I guess I don't really have to anymore though. Weird.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by pjmlp on Friday September 11, 2026 @04:33AM (#49655227)

The problem is that in many companies doing migrations would be the only job, thus now there is none.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by boringg on Thursday September 10, 2026 @10:55AM (#49644821)

While I agree with that statement -- that is also a lot of jobs. We have a lot of humans -- not every single developer sits in the innovation seat. The fewer the jobs available the less employable humans.

I think that rewrite - if AI enabled - owes its thanks to the legion of individuals who put their code up on the internet in the first place.

Weird times.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by doc_ick on Thursday September 10, 2026 @11:35AM (#49645546)

Unfortunately theres no thanks to the suppliers of training data. US courts made sure there’s no recompense for them, and likely never will be.

Seems similar to eminent domain, but without limitations.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by guelo on Thursday September 10, 2026 @08:55PM (#49652196)

This is just not true. In the olden times (pre-claude) devs were constantly asking to do full rewrites of legacy code. This kind of project is exactly the kind of work I've trained for and have loved to do for the last 15 years as a mobile dev.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by exe34 on Thursday September 10, 2026 @10:45AM (#49644634)

It ported overnight. I don't think it would create from scratch without a lot of hand holding.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by greenowl on Thursday September 10, 2026 @10:47AM (#49644684)

Previous company I worked for would have (and did) hire dedicated swift/java mobile developers to build and maintain ios and android native versions (largely porting functionality from an existing web application)

Not anymore.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by atonse on Thursday September 10, 2026 @11:57AM (#49645909)

What's more likely (as others have said) is that the other thousand companies that can't afford to have dedicated staff would've just used React Native. So no jobs were lost, they weren't there in the first place. The places that have dedicated Swift/Java devs can now be more ambitious in what they build.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by organsnyder on Thursday September 10, 2026 @10:50AM (#49644732)

That's fairly rare. Most companies would use a compatibility layer instead.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by josephg on Thursday September 10, 2026 @11:08AM (#49645077)

Really? I’ve worked with plenty of companies that had separate native iOS & Android teams. I don’t know any that use a compatibility layer. Unless by compatibility layer, you mean a web view.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by tonyedgecombe on Friday September 11, 2026 @06:27AM (#49656082)

This does seem like the kind of task LLM's are ideal for. Just like that port of Bun from one language to another.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by dlisboa on Thursday September 10, 2026 @01:03PM (#49646961)

The optimistic outlook:

Just like this has made Web devs into Mobile devs, so could Mobile devs leverage AI to work in Web shops.

I'm not an optimist but there could be an increase of available apps being created which would still keep people employed. Theoretically the cost of creating an iOS app for a company without an engineering team dropped from several hundreds of thousand to a few thousand or hundreds, which could be paid out to a freelancer with AI. More people would go into freelancing for industries which were not contemplated before due to cost.

But I'm not an optimist.

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Re:Shopify moves back to Native from React Native by lnrd on Thursday September 10, 2026 @02:30PM (#49648290)

This app has 15/20 screens, an app this small wouldn't employ many people to begin with. Before there was one guy (op) maintaining it in react native and now he maintains it native. I don't see much change tbh.

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