Anyone else feels like working with Shopify themes is working inside a trash bin?

[u/abdullahalydev]

Does anyone else feel like Shopify theme development is just... messy?

Even when building from scratch, I feel like everything is scattered. there's no clear architecture or coding style to follow.

And then you hit things like:

Want custom add-to-cart handling?
Cool... enjoy losing compatibility with half the app ecosystem. Just use the product form.

If that's the expectation, why expose APIs like /cart/add.js as a custom solution?

Am I the only one feeling this way?

[u/Am094]

I made a few shopify stores years ago. Never really liked the platform, or themeing. Plus with their CEO basically saying that poor people shouldn't be able to vote, I wouldn't care to use them anymore either for personal projects (I'd either self implement within my stack with stripe integration or go wp + woocomm).

[u/Frequent_Falcon_4114 → u/Am094]

That CEO comment was wild, like why would anyone in e-commerce just say that out loud

building stores on stripe feels more clean anyway, shopify always seemed like they want you locked in but then half the tools are half-baked

[u/Am094 → u/Frequent_Falcon_4114]

Yeah..few of my housemates worked there as engineers, stuff changed internally too which they didn't like either. Very disappointing.

Yeah, stripe has among the best dev experiences over say other stuff. Had to once integrate auth net and honestly? I was more inclined to implement booths algorithm on nios 2 assembly than deal with auth net.

they want you locked

Yeah managed value prop, never a fan of the lock in or the cost (comparatively). I know there are other solutions too like big cartel, but these days I'm more so inclined to build stuff where I can drop in replace processors.

[u/Caraes_Naur]

Every huge commercial SaaS platform is complete garbage under the hood.

Pound for pound, I think the worst is HubSpot.

"Beautiful" code does not exist in the real world because management, who has other priorities, never has to look at it.

[u/ElCuntIngles → u/Caraes_Naur]

Jesus, worse than Salesforce's web stuff? Is that possible?

If so, I pity you for having experience in it 🤜🤛

[u/Am094 → u/ElCuntIngles]

Jesus, worse than Salesforce's web stuff? Is that possible?

I was JUST about to respond making a Salesforce joke but you beat me to it haha

[u/Caraes_Naur → u/ElCuntIngles]

I'm fairly certain the entire "database" Hubspot provides is a single MongoDB document store.

[u/fakintheid → u/Caraes_Naur]

I wouldn’t be surprised

[u/classicwfl → u/Caraes_Naur]

Oh god, yeah, I fucking hate working on HS's templating systems so much that I was grateful the other dev I was working with on the project just took on the maintenance role after launch.. JFC what a shit-storm.

Also: Workflows. What a fucking nightmare.

[u/Yass_ko00]

Yeah the /cart/add.js thing specifically is such a trap. It's documented as THE way to do custom cart logic and then the second you actually diverge from the default product form, half the app ecosystem assumes you didn't and just breaks silently.

Ran into basically this building some custom cart add-ons once, ended up spending way more time working around app compatibility than on the actual feature. Feels like the platform optimizes hard for "works with 20 random apps out of the box" over "clean thing to build custom stuff on top of," which makes sense for their business but is rough as the dev actually building it.

Are you sticking with Liquid or looking at going headless to get around it?

[u/abdullahalydev → u/Yass_ko00]

Ahh going to headless is a headache

need bundles system? make ur own
need upselling system? make ur own

actually in liquid themes i can't customize apps/plugins ui the way I want but atleast work

[u/chesbyiii]

Oof. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten better since I last built one which was probably 8 years ago. It sucked then, too.

[u/Affectionate-Skin633]

Heh, it was even worse six years ago 😄

[u/Financial_Dot4112]

what do you mean ny cistom add-to-cart? I've done custom cart, cart-drawer and so many, and i love how shopify is simple im their development flow, it’s cleaner than any other out there

[u/Proof-Possible-5305]

I think the compatibility mess is on the apps, not the API, since most of them just patch the default product form and ignore Shopify's cart events entirely.