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Is anyone using this really? My team is pretty excited about using it but I've been a little more hesitant mostly because I've not read of anyone using it at an

Is anyone using this really? My team is pretty excited about using it but I've been a little more hesitant mostly because I've not read of anyone using it at any sort of scale with success. Even for smaller project it still doesn't seem production ready.

Willamin 4y ago
I'm using SwiftUI extensively when I get the opportunity. The team that I'm on has decided to shift our UIKit+Storyboards app towards leveraging SwiftUI more. It won't work for 100% of the app, but that's alright because there are easy-to-implement escape hatches back into UIKit. The worst part of the dev experience is that we are currently supporting back to iOS 13 (which is when SwiftUI was introduced). That means we can only really use the oldest SwiftUI components and modifiers; it's not too bad, but finding usable examples online is tricky sometimes (they often assume the latest).
rudedogg 4y ago
It is frustrating at times, but I like writing UI in code and it increases my productivity quite a bit. I’m using it to build an IDE (https://austinrude.com/devlog/zig-ide-2022-04/ https://austinrude.com/devlog/zig-ide-2022-04/). I don’t think I would have attempted a project this large without it. I had to fall back to AppKit/NSViewRepresentable for the tabview, text editor, and a couple other views. There are probably over a hundred SwiftUI views though. And I am hoping I can switch the tabview to SwiftUI after WWDC so it’s easier to extend. About WWDC, I wonder if we’ll see a CoreAnimation replacement this year that is exposed to SwiftUI views? I don’t know what the implications would be, but it makes sense when you look back at how they’ve refused to offer/expose the underlying UIKit/AppKit APIs that SwiftUI is wrapping for some controls.
emehex 4y ago
I just finished a contract on an app with 400K users. It was in pretty bad shape when I got my hands on it. Last update: February 2020. Targeting iOS 11+, mostly UIKit, powered by Cocoapods with 25 dependencies, and 1.3M LOC. It took me 3 months to rewrite everything from scratch in SwiftUI, with 100% feature parity. Of the ~20 different view/components that I had to write, just one required me to dip into UIKit (with UIViewRepresentable to bridge). Now the app is iOS 14+, 5 dependencies (all managed with Swift Package Manager) and 6.5K LOC, with 0 crashes in the last month. SwiftUI is production ready.
- tomovo 4y ago
  Wait, it went from 1.3M LOC to 6.5K? Was the UI layer really that bloated or are you counting the 3rd party dependencies? I envy you the 3 months without adding any "customer value" (not joking, I'd love that).
  - emehex 4y ago
    Yeah. 1,300,000 to 6,500 (not counting the dependencies). While the previous devs obviously had programming experience, it was clear they were quite green in Swift/iOS. Customer value was that the OG app was crashing like 1 in every 6 uses. Updated app was crash free. Plus, added two new features during the rewrite.

Willamin 4y ago

I'm using SwiftUI extensively when I get the opportunity. The team that I'm on has decided to shift our UIKit+Storyboards app towards leveraging SwiftUI more. It won't work for 100% of the app, but that's alright because there are easy-to-implement escape hatches back into UIKit. The worst part of the dev experience is that we are currently supporting back to iOS 13 (which is when SwiftUI was introduced). That means we can only really use the oldest SwiftUI components and modifiers; it's not too bad, but finding usable examples online is tricky sometimes (they often assume the latest).

rudedogg 4y ago

It is frustrating at times, but I like writing UI in code and it increases my productivity quite a bit. I’m using it to build an IDE (https://austinrude.com/devlog/zig-ide-2022-04/ https://austinrude.com/devlog/zig-ide-2022-04/). I don’t think I would have attempted a project this large without it. I had to fall back to AppKit/NSViewRepresentable for the tabview, text editor, and a couple other views. There are probably over a hundred SwiftUI views though. And I am hoping I can switch the tabview to SwiftUI after WWDC so it’s easier to extend. About WWDC, I wonder if we’ll see a CoreAnimation replacement this year that is exposed to SwiftUI views? I don’t know what the implications would be, but it makes sense when you look back at how they’ve refused to offer/expose the underlying UIKit/AppKit APIs that SwiftUI is wrapping for some controls.

emehex 4y ago

I just finished a contract on an app with 400K users. It was in pretty bad shape when I got my hands on it. Last update: February 2020. Targeting iOS 11+, mostly UIKit, powered by Cocoapods with 25 dependencies, and 1.3M LOC. It took me 3 months to rewrite everything from scratch in SwiftUI, with 100% feature parity. Of the ~20 different view/components that I had to write, just one required me to dip into UIKit (with UIViewRepresentable to bridge). Now the app is iOS 14+, 5 dependencies (all managed with Swift Package Manager) and 6.5K LOC, with 0 crashes in the last month. SwiftUI is production ready.

tomovo 4y ago
Wait, it went from 1.3M LOC to 6.5K? Was the UI layer really that bloated or are you counting the 3rd party dependencies? I envy you the 3 months without adding any "customer value" (not joking, I'd love that).
- emehex 4y ago
  Yeah. 1,300,000 to 6,500 (not counting the dependencies). While the previous devs obviously had programming experience, it was clear they were quite green in Swift/iOS. Customer value was that the OG app was crashing like 1 in every 6 uses. Updated app was crash free. Plus, added two new features during the rewrite.