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For what it’s worth, a lot of developers I know who work on complex iOS applications have more or less abandoned SwiftUI after trying it.

epicureanideal 4y ago
Why are they abandoning it? Could you please share reasons in as much detail as possible? Very interested to know.
- ardit33 4y ago
  It is fine for small toy apps (think the calculator), but it is missing a lot of functionality to build a full fledged app. Think collections, which is the backbone of most apps. UIKit is very mature and has evolved to a really good UI platform. SwiftUI is not even close to unseat it. Maybe in few years it will mature as well, but for now UIKit is the way to go.
  - hbn 4y ago
    I only ever played around with making a toy app while following along with Stanford's Swift UI course[1], and even just the basic things I was doing there, I ran into multiple frustrating/confusing bugs. As if it wasn't difficult enough to wrap your head around learning it in the first place, running into bugs makes it even harder because you think you're doing something wrong until you finally ask online and get told by people more knowledgeable than you, "I don't know why that's happening, wrap your view in a container and it'll work" [1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpGHT1n4-mAsxuRxVPv7kj4-dQYoC3VVu https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpGHT1n4-mAsxuRxVPv7kj4-d...
  - interactivecode 4y ago
    At Beam[0] we are building a web browser that uses SwiftUI almost everywhere except for the text editor. So far its been great to build UI and animations with. Each release gives SwiftUI more apis and features, so there are less and less older style apis to wrap in SwiftUI ourselves. [0] https://hellobeam.com https://hellobeam.com
    - kecupochren 4y ago
      Those scroll effects are quite janky on iOS btw
rudedogg 4y ago
It takes quite a bit to wrap your head around the SwiftUI way of doing things. I think a lot of people get frustrated and throw in the towel. I'm sure React is the same story. And while you can't do everything in SwiftUI, it's pretty solid and capable now. I only have a couple things using AppKit in a large macOS project.

epicureanideal 4y ago

Why are they abandoning it? Could you please share reasons in as much detail as possible? Very interested to know.

ardit33 4y ago
It is fine for small toy apps (think the calculator), but it is missing a lot of functionality to build a full fledged app. Think collections, which is the backbone of most apps. UIKit is very mature and has evolved to a really good UI platform. SwiftUI is not even close to unseat it. Maybe in few years it will mature as well, but for now UIKit is the way to go.
- hbn 4y ago
  I only ever played around with making a toy app while following along with Stanford's Swift UI course[1], and even just the basic things I was doing there, I ran into multiple frustrating/confusing bugs. As if it wasn't difficult enough to wrap your head around learning it in the first place, running into bugs makes it even harder because you think you're doing something wrong until you finally ask online and get told by people more knowledgeable than you, "I don't know why that's happening, wrap your view in a container and it'll work" [1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpGHT1n4-mAsxuRxVPv7kj4-dQYoC3VVu https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpGHT1n4-mAsxuRxVPv7kj4-d...
- interactivecode 4y ago
  At Beam[0] we are building a web browser that uses SwiftUI almost everywhere except for the text editor. So far its been great to build UI and animations with. Each release gives SwiftUI more apis and features, so there are less and less older style apis to wrap in SwiftUI ourselves. [0] https://hellobeam.com https://hellobeam.com
  - kecupochren 4y ago
    Those scroll effects are quite janky on iOS btw

rudedogg 4y ago

It takes quite a bit to wrap your head around the SwiftUI way of doing things. I think a lot of people get frustrated and throw in the towel. I'm sure React is the same story. And while you can't do everything in SwiftUI, it's pretty solid and capable now. I only have a couple things using AppKit in a large macOS project.