alt Hacker NewsThere's been some discussion around Shopify (and others) move from React Native to purely native and that leading some people to conclude that LLMs have effectively killed RN. Which has always seemed silly to me for 2 reasons: First, Shopify almost certainly has on staff (or access to) actual native devs to steer that ship that a small/medium-sized company may not have. But more importantly, it's not the "Translate this RN app into native" that's the trouble. It's the hundreds and thousands of additional iterations you'll have to do on top to maintain and build out that product.
It's hard keeping separate code bases with separate languages in tandem, and while LLMs definitely aid in that area, I can't imagine it's a free lunch.
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They also seem to be ignoring the realities of modern app store reviews. Apple and Google are only getting slower as vibe-coded apps flood their marketplaces with submissions. Maybe Shopify has a special relationship that gets them faster reviews, I don't know. But if not, the ability to put out updates, rollbacks, and hotfixes without being gatekept is a critical feature. Especially with today's security landscape. React Native now seems more compelling than ever before.
We moved one of our apps away from RN to SwiftUI and Android (Jetpack Compose). The binaries are way smaller, and the apps work beautifully.
So I don't see any reason to stick to RN, when we can just use any OS native APIs to our heart's content and our apps automatically feel more native.