Hacker News: hectdev

New comment by hectdev in "Gemini 4 Argon"

hectdev — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 02:29:14 +0000

I've been a Swift/Obj-C engineer for my whole 15 year career. I now have all these odd jobs I have going on Raspberry Pis around my house that LLMs have written in Python. I'm now having them convert some of them to Rust and I am astonished on how fewer resources are used.

New comment by hectdev in "Dots: Always-on agents"

hectdev — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 15:33:42 +0000

I'd assume it pulls at the very human desire to do less so you can spend your time as you want. Collectively, we are really good at making systems we don't understand and still have to exist in this world: Laws, taxes, internet check outs, etc. This is trying to flatten the curve between desire and result for things someone genuinely doesn't want to or doesn't have the time to become an expert in.

New comment by hectdev in "AI Has No Wisdom and Neither Will You"

hectdev — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 13:03:34 +0000

We have all become underwriters and should get paid accordingly for that fact.

New comment by hectdev in "Whoisinspace.com/"

hectdev — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 17:55:37 +0000

Or AdGuard on a Raspberry Pi paired with Tailscale and never see ads on any machines you own again even on cellular.

New comment by hectdev in "I Don't Like LLMs"

hectdev — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:23:45 +0000

I worked for twitter and there was a guy like this. I made a big stink that "yo, everything this guy says just needs to be in a linter" and they actually implemented it.

New comment by hectdev in "I Don't Like LLMs"

hectdev — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:14:43 +0000

what if you're in it for both? I like solving puzzles and want to extract the maximum amount I am due for making a company profits.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:06:28 +0000

Because someone needs to be in the room to show the “make the most money with the least resources” people that there are more variables to consider.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 01:27:18 +0000

I'll put it this way, my argument was pro native. And in the context of the article, if a large company had unlimited resources, they would choose native. I'm not discussing the business case for it, but the end result of it being the better option. It can be seen as "Shopify tried Reactive Native and left it behind the second they could after sinking resources into it for 6 years".

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:58:03 +0000

Challenge not accepted but deferred to the article where one of the largest business wants to sit at the intersection of native apis without a a middle layer for the sake of saving money. Put another way, given unlimited resources, native wins out over shared.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:55:34 +0000

Not sure why you are defining my vindication. Its purely rooted in native is the better solution for mobile apps. Which they are using. Not sure how that makes it the opposite.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:53:54 +0000

Shopify is moving its mobile apps from React Native back to native Swift and Kotlin. With the main cost of native gone, the benefits of staying close to platform APIs and first-party tooling win out. This has been my ethos. That native is better than shared.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:44:15 +0000

Yea, I hear that. I'm content with winning the argument and truthfully, I think they will find they need to hire iOS engineers because we do more than write Swift. There are whole ecosystems of knowledge to go from a product idea, sit in meetings with many stakeholders, and implement the actual thing everyone wants. All they got here was a 1-to-1 implementation of their current app which was born of engineers working through real constraints. It says nothing of new features that have to play nice with other pillars of the company.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:38:55 +0000

Correct, I advocated for the solution that produced the best outcome for user experience, code and architecture simplicity, and prevented having to rewrite an app in the future in native. Which has been validated here.

The android shortfall is a real one but I also pushed for hiring native android developers too.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:36:01 +0000

I'm not arguing the business sense. Two sides can be right which is why I advocated for native development. Which is vindicated here.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:34:07 +0000

I mean, why would they admit to it being the wrong decision. Its a business.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:26:38 +0000

I read it. They chose native over shared. Hence vindicated.

New comment by hectdev in "De-Brainrot Vacations"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:17:25 +0000

oh trust me, I have made almost all of my furniture. It was inevitable.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:16:47 +0000

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.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:15:48 +0000

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.

New comment by hectdev in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"

hectdev — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:13:21 +0000

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.