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Anyone who’s tried to learn native app development, especially on Mac or iOS, will know that it’s a massive pain in the backside. Documentation is sparse, locat

Anyone who’s tried to learn native app development, especially on Mac or iOS, will know that it’s a massive pain in the backside. Documentation is sparse, located in exactly one place, not readable on mobile (!!! the ultimate in irony), formerly available but now deleted, or only available in live video presentation format. I blame the OS vendors as much as anyone.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
Native iOS dev is pretty easy to get started on these days, there's loads of material for both UIKit and SwiftUI. From my view it's easier than getting started on native Android dev by a good measure. Native Mac dev on the other hand is another matter. The situation has improved some since then, but it's not too different from when I picked up Objective-C + Cocoa/AppKit back in the early-mid 00s, where nearly all instructional material came in the form of print or random tidbits scattered across various developer blogs.
- spike021 5y ago
  I'll mostly +1 this as someone who got into iOS dev and went straight to SwiftUI for the past 2 months. There are some individual doc pages that seem to be auto-generated and a bit sparse when it comes to useful context. For instance, sometimes X object cannot be instantiated on its own according to its relevant doc and you need to use Y internal API that provides it instead. However, there's no explanation as to why or what can be done instead, which doesn't help someone who's very new to the architecture and frameworks.
  - jfb 5y ago
    I had to go bug people I knew who had worked on QuickTime frameworks BITD to get anything done when I worked at Apple the first time, in 2004. It's not and never has been simply an external problem.
    - astrange 5y ago
      Well, nothing now is as confusing as QuickTime 7. I don't think it's possible to write something against that without bugs even if you have the source.
      - jfb 5y ago
        This is very true.
- ironmagma 5y ago
  All three of those are orders of magnitude harder to learn than web technologies, which have been backwards compatible for something like the past 2 or 3 decades and see little churn in the APIs. Not saying it’s better, but it is a lot easier to learn, so the vendors need to work a lot harder if they want to compete, which they don’t do, which is why Electron is so popular.
dylan604 5y ago
>(!!! the ultimate in irony) It's not like people are developing using their mobile device. I'm sure the online docs are assumed to be read by people on a non-mobile device. I can't imagine trying to read docs on mobile while banging out code on a laptop. Seems pointless, especially if the docs have links for downloading something or what not.
- ironmagma 5y ago
  It’s only pointless if you don’t believe the iPhone is a revolutionary communication tool that changes how we interact with the Internet, which seems like a strange position to be held by someone on the iOS team. It’s really some of the only documentation I’ve come across that can’t be read on mobile, and it’s all because of a sidebar which isn’t even a good reason.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I don't care how revolutionary one may or may not think it, but it is an extremely horrible tool for a developer actively working on a project and referencing the docs.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

Native iOS dev is pretty easy to get started on these days, there's loads of material for both UIKit and SwiftUI. From my view it's easier than getting started on native Android dev by a good measure. Native Mac dev on the other hand is another matter. The situation has improved some since then, but it's not too different from when I picked up Objective-C + Cocoa/AppKit back in the early-mid 00s, where nearly all instructional material came in the form of print or random tidbits scattered across various developer blogs.

spike021 5y ago
I'll mostly +1 this as someone who got into iOS dev and went straight to SwiftUI for the past 2 months. There are some individual doc pages that seem to be auto-generated and a bit sparse when it comes to useful context. For instance, sometimes X object cannot be instantiated on its own according to its relevant doc and you need to use Y internal API that provides it instead. However, there's no explanation as to why or what can be done instead, which doesn't help someone who's very new to the architecture and frameworks.
- jfb 5y ago
  I had to go bug people I knew who had worked on QuickTime frameworks BITD to get anything done when I worked at Apple the first time, in 2004. It's not and never has been simply an external problem.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Well, nothing now is as confusing as QuickTime 7. I don't think it's possible to write something against that without bugs even if you have the source.
    - jfb 5y ago
      This is very true.
ironmagma 5y ago
All three of those are orders of magnitude harder to learn than web technologies, which have been backwards compatible for something like the past 2 or 3 decades and see little churn in the APIs. Not saying it’s better, but it is a lot easier to learn, so the vendors need to work a lot harder if they want to compete, which they don’t do, which is why Electron is so popular.

dylan604 5y ago

>(!!! the ultimate in irony) It's not like people are developing using their mobile device. I'm sure the online docs are assumed to be read by people on a non-mobile device. I can't imagine trying to read docs on mobile while banging out code on a laptop. Seems pointless, especially if the docs have links for downloading something or what not.

ironmagma 5y ago
It’s only pointless if you don’t believe the iPhone is a revolutionary communication tool that changes how we interact with the Internet, which seems like a strange position to be held by someone on the iOS team. It’s really some of the only documentation I’ve come across that can’t be read on mobile, and it’s all because of a sidebar which isn’t even a good reason.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I don't care how revolutionary one may or may not think it, but it is an extremely horrible tool for a developer actively working on a project and referencing the docs.