The Pragmatic Engineer

Why has Shopify dropped React Native?

This article analyzes the technical and strategic shift as Shopify moves from React Native back to fully native development. It explores how improvements in AI coding assistants reduce the historical overhead of maintaining separate native codebases and examines the broader industry trends involving cross-platform frameworks versus native architectures.

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The Pragmatic EngineerAug 18, 202617 readmid

Headed for the Exit: the Great Engineering Leader Career Break

This article analyzes the increasing trend of senior engineering leaders, such as CTOs and VPs of Engineering, opting for prolonged career breaks due to burnout, shifting organizational structures, and unrealistic founder expectations regarding AI integration. It identifies common drivers of this departure, including the pressure to drastically reduce engineering costs and the struggle to remain relevant in an AI-native landscape. The author highlights how these factors, alongside the flattening of organizational hierarchies, are fundamentally changing the landscape for engineering management.

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The Pragmatic EngineerAug 11, 202623 readmid

Software engineering at a proprietary trading company: Optiver

This article explores the specialized software engineering practices within proprietary trading firms, focusing on the high-performance requirements and lack of external customers. It highlights how firms like Optiver customize industry-standard technologies, such as Postgres and GitHub Actions, to achieve nanosecond-level precision and internal system observability.

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