3 ms·

I agree about React Native, it basically makes JS a first class language on the platform. I was a native only guy for as long as the platforms have been around.

I agree about React Native, it basically makes JS a first class language on the platform. I was a native only guy for as long as the platforms have been around. But the chrome dev tools debugging, ability to quickly and easily share code between the web and mobile, and the quick dev cycle is really powerful. I really disagree that swift is a disaster, for the most part it's a extremely well designed language. Great functional tools, great performance, and playgrounds plus a useable repl were all huge steps for the iOS platform.

AlwaysBCoding 11y ago
Swift is awful to use in practice. It once took me 24 hours to parse a JSON response into a Swift object. In ruby you can get a ruby object from JSON by calling JSON.parse(data)... that's it. It takes one second. In Swift it's a nightmare, it can take you a full day. Who the hell has time for that? Startups are all about speed, who wants to waste a day trying to parse JSON when it's a one-liner in literally every other language ever made. I also hate using mutable objects for my data model. Swift allegedly solves this with Structs but they're really hard to use in practice. Want to pass a struct through a Notification? Too bad, needs to inherit from NSObject so guess you're stuck using mutable objects? Swift might be a well designed language from an academic standpoint. I have no idea, I'm new to programming. But I can say for sure that it's horrible to use compared to other languages that I've used in production (Ruby, Clojure, Javascript). I would bet anything that being able to use any language/workflow of your choosing and compiling to iOS native through JS will be a better business decision than coupling yourself to XCode/Swift and whatever hacks you build to make the workflow less painful.

3 ms·

I agree about React Native, it basically makes JS a first class language on the platform. I was a native only guy for as long as the platforms have been around.

by jaegerpicker 11y ago

AlwaysBCoding 11y ago
Swift is awful to use in practice. It once took me 24 hours to parse a JSON response into a Swift object. In ruby you can get a ruby object from JSON by calling JSON.parse(data)... that's it. It takes one second. In Swift it's a nightmare, it can take you a full day. Who the hell has time for that? Startups are all about speed, who wants to waste a day trying to parse JSON when it's a one-liner in literally every other language ever made. I also hate using mutable objects for my data model. Swift allegedly solves this with Structs but they're really hard to use in practice. Want to pass a struct through a Notification? Too bad, needs to inherit from NSObject so guess you're stuck using mutable objects? Swift might be a well designed language from an academic standpoint. I have no idea, I'm new to programming. But I can say for sure that it's horrible to use compared to other languages that I've used in production (Ruby, Clojure, Javascript). I would bet anything that being able to use any language/workflow of your choosing and compiling to iOS native through JS will be a better business decision than coupling yourself to XCode/Swift and whatever hacks you build to make the workflow less painful.