Top three tips for SwiftUI learners

Recorded May 31st 2020 – watch the full episode on YouTube.

What would your top three pieces of advice be for someone who is just learning SwiftUI??

Meng To: Well, that's a big one. First of all, don't overthink it. A lot of people, they are shopping for the best platform right now. They're like, "Oh my God, should I use Flutter? Should I use React Native? Should I use..." Don't overthink it, have fun. If you have fun, you're going to get it. Launch your first app first, don't think about launching 10 apps across 10 platforms, launch the app that you're in love with because you're in love with it, people are going to be in love with it as well. Right?

I think that's the principle that I go by, have fun with learning, maybe you're not going to have fun with SwiftUI and that's totally fine, but please try it. And that's my word and that's Paul's word as well. I can vouch for SwiftUI, if you believe it, great. But at the end of the day have fun with it.

“I think that's the principle that I go by, have fun with learning, maybe you're not going to have fun with SwiftUI and that's totally fine, but please try it.”

And thirdly is don't skip design. I think design is such an important part of development, not just for designers, but also for developers, right? If you look at all the successful apps, even the Mac apps, we all love Mac apps, right? Even though it's not an ecosystem that is healthy right now, we all love Mac apps.

I use a lot of Mac apps, I can vouch for them, but you can see that they're very well designed and they have matured so much over the past decades. If you look at any Mac app that you're using right now, if you look at the design, it's good. And for some reason... And oftentimes they're made by a single developer.

So, what I can say is that do not skip design. Design is very important. Design is not just about the visuals, it's also about the UX. It's also about your approach to code. How to make your code more beautiful. How to make your code more exciting. And, obviously, don't skip code, because we all know that code is at the back of every single app out there. So, design plus code.

“Don't overthink, have fun, and focus on design too. So those three things, folks, to help you get there as fast as you can.”

Paul Hudson: There we go. I got the first one, have fun. I definitely agree with that because you want, honestly, just to try it out folks, because it's one of the very few platforms where you can experience just joy, noodling around, trying things out, experimenting, and seeing what happens. Get really, really fast feedback and make gorgeous things. That was the first one, have fun.

The third one was, of course, don't forget about design. Get beautiful code. Love beautiful code. Beautiful code is so important. Won't necessarily say exciting code. I don't want exciting code, I want beautiful code. But I don't want to be excited by the code around me. I want to think, that's a bit too clever, it's probably a bad thing. Did I miss number two? What was number two? Have fun, focus on design…

Meng To: Don't overthink.

Paul Hudson: Don't overthink, okay, there we go. Have fun. Don't overthink, have fun, and focus on design too. So those three things, folks, to help you get there as fast as you can, and just get in there and try it out. Because it is there, built into Xcode, works on all Apple's platforms, with varying degrees of quality. Give it a try, see what you can make, and see where it takes you.

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