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The Swift SDK for Android

swift.org

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Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#241

Post by viktorcode »

wiseowise wrote: post #74
colesantiago wrote: post #3

What does this mean for React Native? Is Swift now going to be the de facto language for Mobile (and maybe Desktop) development?

Why would a marginal platform language become de facto language for mobile? If anything, Kotlin is much better positioned to fill the niche. It is already far, far ahead of anything Swift has to offer and is backed by a company actually making money out of the tools. What incentive does Apple have? My bet is expanding Apple services (Apple TV, Music, etc.), but is that enough for Apple to create a proper dev ecosyste…

> It is already far, far ahead of anything Swift has to offer

Please share what Kotlin has that Swift doesn't

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#242

Post by tomburgs »

Farbklex wrote: post #231
tomburgs wrote: post #224

I've worked with Flutter, React Native, and now I'm building an app in SwiftUI. I've found a few things in the process: 1.) Neither RN nor Flutter seems to be able to create truly native applications on iOS. I've never once seen an application made in either of them and thought it was a native iOS application. 2.) Unless your application must support both platforms, android (in an economic sense) is dead weight. I wa…

What's your market? Android being financially irrelevant seems very US-centric.

Western & Northern Europe. It's not that it was a negligible share of Android users, it's that they didn't generate any meaningful revenue.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#243

Post by JimDabell »

palata wrote: post #99
bsimpson wrote: post #86

The most important question for every cross platform framework is what happens to the UI? Adobe products (both the Creative Suite, and their Flex Builder environment for Flash app) had their own design system that felt foreign on every platform it shipped on. If you wanted something that felt native, you had to reimplement e.g. Apple Aqua in Flash yourself. Flutter goes out of its way to do that work for you, aiming…

> The most important question for every cross platform framework is what happens to the UI? I kindly disagree. The first feature I want from a cross-platform framework is that it lets me write a native UI. That's why I like KMP: I can just share a framework with an iOS app built with SwiftUI. Sharing business logic makes a lot of sense in a ton of cases and has been done forever (C/C++/Rust/Go libraries, etc). Sharin…

> > The most important question for every cross platform framework is what happens to the UI?

> I kindly disagree. The first feature I want from a cross-platform framework is that it lets me write a native UI.

I don’t understand – aren’t you agreeing?

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#245

Post by SergeAx »

bsimpson wrote: post #86

The most important question for every cross platform framework is what happens to the UI? Adobe products (both the Creative Suite, and their Flex Builder environment for Flash app) had their own design system that felt foreign on every platform it shipped on. If you wanted something that felt native, you had to reimplement e.g. Apple Aqua in Flash yourself. Flutter goes out of its way to do that work for you, aiming…

I would understand people's craving for pixel perfection, smooth 120Hz scrolling, etc, if we had nothing else to want. But I believe that we are now in a totally different era when overall software quality is degrading and we lack some basic stuff here and there, even in the apps of multi-billion-valued companies. In this situation UX should be much more important than UI.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#246

Post by afavour »

andrekandre wrote: post #129
palata wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most important question for every cross platform framework is what happens to the UI? I kindly disagree. The first feature I want from a cross-platform framework is that it lets me write a native UI. That's why I like KMP: I can just share a framework with an iOS app built with SwiftUI. Sharing business logic makes a lot of sense in a ton of cases and has been done forever (C/C++/Rust/Go libraries, etc). Sharin…

> What KMP (and I'm hoping Swift for Android) bring is the possibility to share a Kotlin (respectively Swift) library instead of sharing code with C/C++/Rust/Go. So that an Android/iOS team can keep using Android/Swift without having to introduce a third language for sharing logic. have gone down this route before, and tbh the biggest issue is dev ux (ios devs cant debug easily, model mismatches vs kotlin e.g kotlin…

I’ve experienced much the same as you but that’s one of the reasons I’m interested to see where Swift on Android goes. These problems are solvable, it’s just that current implementations haven’t solved them satisfactorily.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#247

Post by Vipsy »

When it comes to UI, most of us know native wins for actual feel and simplicity. Cross-platform UI tends to create new headaches, not solutions. Still, having more options like this pushes the ecosystem forward. Let's just hope the platform docs stay sharp and open for devs who want to build confidently.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#248

Post by crowbahr »

trevor-e wrote: post #47

Very excited to see this as an official project! I've been toying around with multiplatform frameworks like RN and Flutter for a side project of mine but they never feel right. I'd rather use the native UI per platform and have a nice way to share business logic. KMP exists but I think for most developers wanting to build an app it's more common to build for iOS first, and then port to Android later if the app gets t…

The issue with that approach is that the state of the art for iOS dev is about 15 years behind the state of the art for Android dev. The amount of simple things that are incredibly painful for iOS devs to do is astounding. Some of that is because xcode is horrific, some of it is that the ecosystem is starved by disinvestment from Apple.

I've talked with colleagues in several companies and the story is always the same: the iOS repository is a patchwork of horrible patterns that shatters when you update to the latest iOS target.

At my current employer it takes 4 iOS devs longer to implement things than it takes 1.5 Android devs (0.5 because the other .5 is spent being Team Lead and architecting, planning, endless meetings etc).

When I talked with the KMP team at Google they were mentioning that their most enthusiastic user base at Google was iOS developers, begging to be saved from their tooling nightmares.

I'm sure some defensive devs will show up here but I've been at 5 different places over my decade at work and every single one of them has had endless struggles hiring iOS devs, maintaining iOS projects etc.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#249

Post by crowbahr »

bitpush wrote: post #68
ls-a wrote: post #40

Thank you. Please kill RN and Flutter already. I'm done with square UI apps that handle touches after two days

I have no love for RN and Flutter, but what makes you think Swift on Android will be even remotely close to what Flutter and RN has? If anything, Apple will launch this and quickly forget this exist.

It's also a false dichotomy. My money is all on KMP over any of the 3.

React isn't going anywhere but I expect 5 years from now KMP will be the tool of choice for native app startups.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#250

Post by abustamam »

fragmede wrote: post #206
forgotusername6 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you want your app to work offline?

And not just off-line, but as we learned last week, if us–east-1 is down you have spotty connectivity, not hard down, and your device needs to not cook your users; literally in the case of Sleep8.

We've really hit a strange level of dystopia when your bed doesn't work because a server is down
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