In this conversation, Ben, a Director of Product at Shopify, shares his journey to the company, discusses the latest updates in Shopify Editions Winter '25, and highlights improvements in the CLI and GraphQL API.

Ben emphasizes the importance of community engagement and the potential for future developments in the Shopify ecosystem. Ongoing improvements and future vision for Liquid and its integration with developer tools like VS Code are highlighted. Ben also emphasizes the importance of enhancing the developer experience, streamlining workflows, and leveraging community feedback. The discussion also touches on the role of AI in development, the significance of open-source collaboration, and the need for a cohesive and intuitive coding environment.

Episode Takeaways

• The Winter Edition focuses on refining existing features rather than introducing new ones, "The Boring Edition"
• CLI improvements aim to enhance the developer experience significantly.
• GraphQL API enhancements allow for better theme management and integration.
• Community feedback is crucial for product development at Shopify.
• Ben's journey to Shopify involved building his own company first.
• The CLI has been rebuilt to improve functionality and ease of use.
• GraphQL is now fully integrated for managing themes and other resources.
• Ben encourages developers to build apps using Shopify's public APIs.
• The future of Shopify includes more extensibility and community-driven tools. The goal is to enhance the developer experience with tools like VS Code.
• Streamlining Liquid development is crucial for efficiency.
• Future improvements will focus on making Liquid more expressive and simpler.
• Community engagement is vital for the evolution of Liquid.
• AI tools like Copilot can significantly impact development workflows.
• The integration of various tools can create a seamless experience for developers.
• Liquid's evolution aims to maintain simplicity while adding functionality.
• Building in public fosters transparency and collaboration.
• The developer experience (DX) is directly tied to user experience (UX).
• Hot reloading and better asset management are key future features.