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Is SwiftUI the greatest thing since sliced bread? Is it too easy?

Forums > SwiftUI

@speg  

Hi! Long time web developer here. I've dabbled with iOS development in the past but never got a chance to dive in.

With all this downtime during COVID-19 I somehow stumbled back. I was pleastly surprised to find Swift UI. A declaritive UI framework? In the same vien as React? For all Apple platforms?! 🤯

Now I'm plowing full steam ahead, whipping up apps like nobody's business. I can slap down some code and have a functioning UI in minutes. No more worrying about how to learn storyboards, segues, or whatever it was before. I'm sprinkling in some lovely animations here and there - just becasue! This is great!

Obviously SwiftUI is still young, and missing many things - but I don't mind (I don't even know what they are yet). From what I've seen so far as an outsider - it's been fantasic. What's the feeling like from more experienced iOS developers? Is it just a gimick? Are there serious limitations? Has it lowered the bar to entry too much, so scrubs like me are going to flood the system?

3      

@twostraws  Site AdminHWS+

There are many serious limitations, but mostly around what you can and can't do with existing Apple frameworks. For example, large parts of UIKit and AppKit are missing. Hopefully WWDC20 will fix that!

4      

Indeed, I was also pleasantly surprised with SwiftUI !

Back in the time of Objective-C, I was always discouraged to learn how to craft iOS apps. Then I made one, and it was a steep learning curve.

Then came Swift, which gave me a lot of hope. Code interpretation felt way more natural. I felt like all my projects were easier, but something still felt complex.

Then came SwiftUI, which gave me another wave of hope. Code interpretation is even easier. But after playing a LOT with it during the last 365 days, it's true, there are huge limitations :

  • No CollectionView
  • No native MapView
  • No way to easily offset a field when keyboard appears
  • No way to programatically scroll a ScrollView to an anchor
  • etc.

However, SwiftUI is at its first stage. I just cannot wait for SwiftUI 2.0 to be unveiled at WWDC, this is going to be a magic moment!

BTW, this website (Hacking with Swift) has helped me TREMENDOUSLY with my projects. The examples are simplified at their most minimal form, which actually encourages me to read them and most importantly, understand them. Props @twostraws, you're doing a perfect job!

4      

As a long-time PHP developer who finally started figuring out application development and Xcode via HWS's UIKit course, I've dabbled with SwiftUI and it just feels...icky and inconsistent. Perhaps part of it is like the React comparison someone made above. I've started the SwiftUI lessons, and I keep getting left with the impression that SwiftUI is supposed to take an HTML-style approach to app design (node trees, etc.), yet it then goes out and does logically inconsistent things like making you use a separate node inside an element to color it. Putting all of the attributes on the trailing tag instead of up front where you're likely to look for them also results in a lot of confusion.

Like the rest of you, I'm curious to see where things go at WWDC, but in the meantime I'm quite happy using UIKit and SpriteKit and leaving SwiftUI to the side...

3      

Its great until it isn't... A lot of it is very nice until you come up against a bug and SwiftUI has a lot of bugs once you try and do something big.

For me development has gone like this.

  • Implement A

  • Implememt B

  • Discover that some contol, doesn't work in is a specific type of view properly*

  • Find a workaround

  • Implement C

  • Implement D

  • Discover D doesn't quite work right

  • Try to work around it

  • Discover that the new workaround is not compatible with work around for B

  • Think of a new way fo doing things ...

  • Implement E

  • Implememt F

  • I have found that some controls do not play nicely with Form and List and others do not work in Scroll View

I hope tha Apple fix some of the issues and limitations soon (specifically with the Navigation stack & Navigation Bars).

Like others have said this site is a great resource....

3      

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