5 ms·

Is swift docs still bad? I remember developing for swift was a pain when you need to look for docs. Most of my resource came from Raywenderlich instead of offic

Is swift docs still bad? I remember developing for swift was a pain when you need to look for docs. Most of my resource came from Raywenderlich instead of official apple docs lol. I have since moved away, but current company wants to move from RN to Native dev so i'm confused if i should be onboard with mobile or move to other dev teams. I find it weird how big companies like Microsoft and Apple have these small flaws. Apple has really bad docs, but good in using its own tech. Microsoft on the other hand has good docs, but almost never uses its own tech (yes, i'm talking about xamarin).

protomyth 5y ago
Yes. Worse is most examples are outdated and don't compile. Plus, we are now in an era where third party publishers are not putting out books to cover the gaps like before.
- worik 5y ago
  There are very few examples in Apple documentation
finiteseries 5y ago
Swift.org is decent, framework docs are still very bad. Bridging RN - Apple is a hell of a market at the moment though, getting the transition on your resume is worth a look.
novok 5y ago
Apple’s iOS libs (not swift ui) although not well documented in parts, is probably the most complete and self consistent set of ui dev libraries around to develop against. Android and web are far more chaotic. I haven’t done windows dev so maybe that is better but nobody does windows desktop anyway. Worst part of it is the lack of a full open source stack and build speed / xcode stability for swift, but its not bad if your just 1-5 engineers in one app. But if you scale to 30+ with +1 million lines after a few years it starts getting real bad unless you architect your app with devapps like airbnb did: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/designing-for-productivity-in-a-large-scale-ios-application-9376a430a0bf https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/designing-for-producti...
- robertwt7 5y ago
  android isn't more chaotic back then for me, probably because java docs are literally everywhere. Hard to find and navigate, but most of the time I know where to find things. Swift is its own language and libraries, but I can't seem to find stuff in apple's website. I remember many times I am literally stuck, don't know where to read the definition or how to do stuff, then I end up having to ask people in reddit / SO. I actually still find people constantly complaining about the the docs in reddit every now and then. Docs is really really important, having developed with laravel, moved to django, and react for FE, I just realise that their docs are really really good
  - andrewjl 5y ago
    There's a free book "The Swift Programming Language" that should answer most questions about the Swift language and its standard library. The web version is here: https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/index.html https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/index.html
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Android is even more so, because Android Java isn't Java, and there are lots of issues with stuff that just gets dumped into some github repo from Google where we are supposed to learn from sample code and that is it.
- trissylegs 5y ago
  Windows Desktop has much more documentation than both Android and iOS. It does take a bit of practice to find things in MSDN, but if it exists^1, then I'll be very surprised if it's not documented. (Except Azure APIs, I don't know why Azure seemed to miss out) 1: By exists I mean a public API. Even some APIs that aren't intended to be used by applications have documentation. Eg: RtlGenRandom.
  - cube00 5y ago
    I saw someone mentioning that in some places the MSDN documentation was light on detail because because in the early days (Win32/MFC/AFX) they were trying to sell training and certifications with the actual detail in it.
jonplackett 5y ago
Hacking with swift is my go-to for tutorials / quick how-tos. Much simpler to follow than the docs or Ray https://www.hackingwithswift.com/ https://www.hackingwithswift.com/
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
SwiftUI's docs have been notoriously bad. I have heard that they are improving, but I haven't done anything "ship" in SwiftUI yet, so I don't have much to go on. I know that the docs were so bad, that one chap wrote this site and app: https://swiftui-lab.com https://swiftui-lab.com They are really nice.
xiaolingxiao 5y ago
it has become significantly better, especially that of SwiftUI. When I followed the doc this summer, I actually got up to speed very quickly on swiftUI. I will say Rayenderlich has a habit of either over-engineering things, or engineering things in a way that's not needed in my use case. So I find his tutorials to be a reference at best.
pjmlp 5y ago
Xamarin is not a Microsoft own tech per se, well actually it is since they bought it, however their crossplatform teams have always been about C++ and JavaScript (C++ rulez at WinDev, no matter what). Actually I think it was more of a strategic move to "own" mono runtime and provide a starting point for Visual Studio for Mac (which is anyway being rebuilt). The fact that Xamarin is now trying to be Swing for .NET 7, and still failing on Linux (if the community wants they should build it), and on macOS (using Catalyst instead of proper Cocoa APIs), doesn't seem it is getting that much love overall. Specially now apparently we should all be using Blazor either directly on the browser, via Electron or WebWidgers as per their own marketing. In the end it boils down that there are many UI teams, each of them trying to make a point of still being relevant to managment while fighting for resources.

protomyth 5y ago

Yes. Worse is most examples are outdated and don't compile. Plus, we are now in an era where third party publishers are not putting out books to cover the gaps like before.

worik 5y ago
There are very few examples in Apple documentation

finiteseries 5y ago

Swift.org is decent, framework docs are still very bad. Bridging RN - Apple is a hell of a market at the moment though, getting the transition on your resume is worth a look.

novok 5y ago

Apple’s iOS libs (not swift ui) although not well documented in parts, is probably the most complete and self consistent set of ui dev libraries around to develop against. Android and web are far more chaotic. I haven’t done windows dev so maybe that is better but nobody does windows desktop anyway. Worst part of it is the lack of a full open source stack and build speed / xcode stability for swift, but its not bad if your just 1-5 engineers in one app. But if you scale to 30+ with +1 million lines after a few years it starts getting real bad unless you architect your app with devapps like airbnb did: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/designing-for-productivity-in-a-large-scale-ios-application-9376a430a0bf https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/designing-for-producti...

robertwt7 5y ago
android isn't more chaotic back then for me, probably because java docs are literally everywhere. Hard to find and navigate, but most of the time I know where to find things. Swift is its own language and libraries, but I can't seem to find stuff in apple's website. I remember many times I am literally stuck, don't know where to read the definition or how to do stuff, then I end up having to ask people in reddit / SO. I actually still find people constantly complaining about the the docs in reddit every now and then. Docs is really really important, having developed with laravel, moved to django, and react for FE, I just realise that their docs are really really good
- andrewjl 5y ago
  There's a free book "The Swift Programming Language" that should answer most questions about the Swift language and its standard library. The web version is here: https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/index.html https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/index.html
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Android is even more so, because Android Java isn't Java, and there are lots of issues with stuff that just gets dumped into some github repo from Google where we are supposed to learn from sample code and that is it.
trissylegs 5y ago
Windows Desktop has much more documentation than both Android and iOS. It does take a bit of practice to find things in MSDN, but if it exists^1, then I'll be very surprised if it's not documented. (Except Azure APIs, I don't know why Azure seemed to miss out) 1: By exists I mean a public API. Even some APIs that aren't intended to be used by applications have documentation. Eg: RtlGenRandom.
- cube00 5y ago
  I saw someone mentioning that in some places the MSDN documentation was light on detail because because in the early days (Win32/MFC/AFX) they were trying to sell training and certifications with the actual detail in it.

jonplackett 5y ago

Hacking with swift is my go-to for tutorials / quick how-tos. Much simpler to follow than the docs or Ray https://www.hackingwithswift.com/ https://www.hackingwithswift.com/

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

SwiftUI's docs have been notoriously bad. I have heard that they are improving, but I haven't done anything "ship" in SwiftUI yet, so I don't have much to go on. I know that the docs were so bad, that one chap wrote this site and app: https://swiftui-lab.com https://swiftui-lab.com They are really nice.

xiaolingxiao 5y ago

it has become significantly better, especially that of SwiftUI. When I followed the doc this summer, I actually got up to speed very quickly on swiftUI. I will say Rayenderlich has a habit of either over-engineering things, or engineering things in a way that's not needed in my use case. So I find his tutorials to be a reference at best.

pjmlp 5y ago

Xamarin is not a Microsoft own tech per se, well actually it is since they bought it, however their crossplatform teams have always been about C++ and JavaScript (C++ rulez at WinDev, no matter what). Actually I think it was more of a strategic move to "own" mono runtime and provide a starting point for Visual Studio for Mac (which is anyway being rebuilt). The fact that Xamarin is now trying to be Swing for .NET 7, and still failing on Linux (if the community wants they should build it), and on macOS (using Catalyst instead of proper Cocoa APIs), doesn't seem it is getting that much love overall. Specially now apparently we should all be using Blazor either directly on the browser, via Electron or WebWidgers as per their own marketing. In the end it boils down that there are many UI teams, each of them trying to make a point of still being relevant to managment while fighting for resources.