did you update your Shopify tech stack?

"hey Ryan, i'm curious if you have switched to building shopify apps with react given shopify starting to lean heavily into it... sometimes i just want to build an app and i spend a significant amount of time just keeping up with the latest (embedded app authentication, react, graphql, etc) i ask cause i know you're a big fan of rails/ror "

absolutely not. although i work in technology i generally avoid all new technologies.

React is not new per se (started 2013) but modern web dev's obsession with single page apps that have an API backend, in my opinion, doesn't lend itself to rapid development by 1 person.

at Fork Equity our portfolio includes several apps with a Ruby/Rails backend and either Angular, VueJS, or React frontend. but whenever i build stuff solo i do simple HTML/CSS-only frontends, with a little bit of JavaScript to enhance the user experience (instant save, infinite scroll, etc type features).

of course you can't avoid some aspects of Shopify's constant onslaught of dev iteration. the embedded app setup is pretty fantastic and, while i still prefer typical REST endpoints over GraphQL, after you write a couple queries and abstract them into ActiveRecord-esque conventions you'll forget about the raw query language underneath. i will be the first to admit that i slowly (see: painfully) write all my GraphQL queries; it's not [yet] second nature to me.

appreciate this question, at this time, given i'm about to dive back into Shopify with a brand new app idea.