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SwiftUI looks promising, but it is not ready at all. It is fine for 'toy apps' but if you want to do anything serious UIKit is unbeatable. I think it will tak

SwiftUI looks promising, but it is not ready at all. It is fine for 'toy apps' but if you want to do anything serious UIKit is unbeatable. I think it will take few more years until SwiftUI can get to feature parity with UIKit.

dagmx 4y ago
I think that's hyperbole. We have multiple, very complex SwiftUI apps published, and there are quite a few on the app store. You can do very fully featured apps in SwiftUI today
lostgame 4y ago
I’m baffled as to how this has been so downvoted. It’s just a fact. Been using SwiftUI for two-some years and while I use it for prototyping, when I actually want to get ‘real’ things done, I go back to UIKit quick as a bolt of lightning.
- programmarchy 4y ago
  I’ve found SwiftUI to be a dramatic improvement over storyboards or view controllers for managing state and flow. Sure, for some view components you need to drop down into UIKit to do some detail work, but then it can be abstracted back into SwiftUI.
  - ardit33 4y ago
    No serious company is using Storyboards. Only toy apps or small companies do, or junior devs. SwiftUI might be ok for them as well.
    - lostgame 4y ago
      I work for a major bank in Canada; we are one of the largest companies in Canada, and we use storyboards. We are very serious about the work we do. We are also working on SwiftUI stuff as well.
      - ardit33 4y ago
        You made my point. You work on a bank, not a software company. Let’s be real, third league and banks treat software as an expense/cost center. Let me know when any of the major companies actually use it seriously.
        dagmx 4y ago
        You seem to have a serious chip on your shoulder, and a lot of your comments are really gatekeeper like. Out of curiosity, what products of note have you developed that give you the right to talk down to everyone else?
        lostgame 4y ago
        Wow, you okay, man? We are a bank. We make software used by millions of people a day. We are a major company. Lost your key, gatekeeper? :P
    - aplummer 4y ago
      How exactly are you building watchOS app? Plenty of serious development uses SwiftUI and storyboards.
    - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
      Apple’s own iOS apps use storyboards.
- interpol_p 4y ago
  I wouldn't describe it as a "fact" that SwiftUI is a toy I have used SwiftUI now in 5 shipping iOS applications and one internal macOS app. Two of them had codebases that extended all the way back to pre-ARC Objective-C! One app was 100% SwiftUI (with two UIKit exceptions where I had to drop down to work around a SwiftUI bug) I get "real" things done in both UIKit and SwiftUI. It is trivial to host a SwiftUI view in UIKit, and it soon becomes the most pleasant part of the app to work on in my experience It's simply a tool to use alongside UIKit, and it happens to be fun to use too
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    > It's simply a tool to use alongside UIKit, and it happens to be fun to use too exactly. the way i look at it is like a super powered version of xml (xib) for describing app uis there are alot of things you cant do in pure xml/xib and the same is true of swiftui, in those cases you need to use an island of imperative code (uikit or custom class) and things work smoother in those cases
- jaegerpicker 4y ago
  I have production apps in the store with SwiftUI so it's not a fact at all. These are non-toy apps. UIKit is more mature but it hasn't matter at all in my experience.
spike021 4y ago
I think it depends on what you're trying to build. I was working on a 'toy app' earlier this year. I needed to use MapKit, but the SwiftUI MapKit is pretty simple, features-wise. So I had to do the more complicated (relatively-speaking as someone with no prior UIKit/Swift experience) solution of using a UIViewRepresentable to host a UIKit MapView. It wasn't the hardest thing to implement but it definitely shows that SwiftUI can't handle everything. I definitely think having that 1:1 parity will help and hopefully it doesn't took too long.
danielvaughn 4y ago
I’ve heard this a lot, and as someone who is just about to jump back into iOS after a 7 year break, I’m inclined to just defer to this opinion. But I’m curious what this means, specifically. What would a good example of a serious UI, in your view? Not looking to argue - I’m genuinely curious.
brailsafe 4y ago
I think this is a bit of hyperbole. SwiftUI itself does a decent enough job. It's kind of like React without much of the ecosystem. If you start with SwiftUI and need to integrate sone part of UIkit without really knowing the patterns, it's daunting for a while, but it's kind of an interesting daunting. My biggest issue is in the blurry line between iOS SwiftUI and mac swiftUI capabilities. A lot of examples are written by ios devs, who aren't even thinking about mac discrepancies

dagmx 4y ago

I think that's hyperbole. We have multiple, very complex SwiftUI apps published, and there are quite a few on the app store. You can do very fully featured apps in SwiftUI today

lostgame 4y ago

I’m baffled as to how this has been so downvoted. It’s just a fact. Been using SwiftUI for two-some years and while I use it for prototyping, when I actually want to get ‘real’ things done, I go back to UIKit quick as a bolt of lightning.

programmarchy 4y ago
I’ve found SwiftUI to be a dramatic improvement over storyboards or view controllers for managing state and flow. Sure, for some view components you need to drop down into UIKit to do some detail work, but then it can be abstracted back into SwiftUI.
- ardit33 4y ago
  No serious company is using Storyboards. Only toy apps or small companies do, or junior devs. SwiftUI might be ok for them as well.
  - lostgame 4y ago
    I work for a major bank in Canada; we are one of the largest companies in Canada, and we use storyboards. We are very serious about the work we do. We are also working on SwiftUI stuff as well.
    - ardit33 4y ago
      You made my point. You work on a bank, not a software company. Let’s be real, third league and banks treat software as an expense/cost center. Let me know when any of the major companies actually use it seriously.
      - dagmx 4y ago
        You seem to have a serious chip on your shoulder, and a lot of your comments are really gatekeeper like. Out of curiosity, what products of note have you developed that give you the right to talk down to everyone else?
      - lostgame 4y ago
        Wow, you okay, man? We are a bank. We make software used by millions of people a day. We are a major company. Lost your key, gatekeeper? :P
  - aplummer 4y ago
    How exactly are you building watchOS app? Plenty of serious development uses SwiftUI and storyboards.
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
    Apple’s own iOS apps use storyboards.
interpol_p 4y ago
I wouldn't describe it as a "fact" that SwiftUI is a toy I have used SwiftUI now in 5 shipping iOS applications and one internal macOS app. Two of them had codebases that extended all the way back to pre-ARC Objective-C! One app was 100% SwiftUI (with two UIKit exceptions where I had to drop down to work around a SwiftUI bug) I get "real" things done in both UIKit and SwiftUI. It is trivial to host a SwiftUI view in UIKit, and it soon becomes the most pleasant part of the app to work on in my experience It's simply a tool to use alongside UIKit, and it happens to be fun to use too
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > It's simply a tool to use alongside UIKit, and it happens to be fun to use too exactly. the way i look at it is like a super powered version of xml (xib) for describing app uis there are alot of things you cant do in pure xml/xib and the same is true of swiftui, in those cases you need to use an island of imperative code (uikit or custom class) and things work smoother in those cases
jaegerpicker 4y ago
I have production apps in the store with SwiftUI so it's not a fact at all. These are non-toy apps. UIKit is more mature but it hasn't matter at all in my experience.

spike021 4y ago

I think it depends on what you're trying to build. I was working on a 'toy app' earlier this year. I needed to use MapKit, but the SwiftUI MapKit is pretty simple, features-wise. So I had to do the more complicated (relatively-speaking as someone with no prior UIKit/Swift experience) solution of using a UIViewRepresentable to host a UIKit MapView. It wasn't the hardest thing to implement but it definitely shows that SwiftUI can't handle everything. I definitely think having that 1:1 parity will help and hopefully it doesn't took too long.

danielvaughn 4y ago

I’ve heard this a lot, and as someone who is just about to jump back into iOS after a 7 year break, I’m inclined to just defer to this opinion. But I’m curious what this means, specifically. What would a good example of a serious UI, in your view? Not looking to argue - I’m genuinely curious.

brailsafe 4y ago

I think this is a bit of hyperbole. SwiftUI itself does a decent enough job. It's kind of like React without much of the ecosystem. If you start with SwiftUI and need to integrate sone part of UIkit without really knowing the patterns, it's daunting for a while, but it's kind of an interesting daunting. My biggest issue is in the blurry line between iOS SwiftUI and mac swiftUI capabilities. A lot of examples are written by ios devs, who aren't even thinking about mac discrepancies