Here's a genuinely philosophical question: is AI writing code quietly rewriting rules we've followed for years?
Since 2020, Shopify bet big on React Native, writing one codebase that runs on both iOS and Android. It saved massive time and let non-mobile developers contribute to their apps.
Now they're going back to native Swift and Kotlin, writing the app twice, once fully native for each platform.
The surprising reason? Coding agents. Writing the same feature twice used to be expensive in time and effort, which was the whole reason cross-platform code sharing existed. But now AI agents write native code fast and reliably enough that doing it twice costs almost the same as doing it once.
The old Trade-off was: less time and one shared codebase, in exchange for weaker performance and a UX that never quite matched each platform's native feel. The new Trade-off is: full native performance and a better UX, at a time cost that AI has quietly shrunk.
So here's the real question for discussion: is this the beginning of the end for cross-platform frameworks? Or do React Native and Flutter still win in other scenarios? Curious what you think.
🔗 Original Source & Reference: https://shopify.engineering/back-to-native Published automatically via FeedMind AI Content Pipeline.