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iOS indie app development looks like

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Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#31

The Swift compiler is still the only compiler I know that times out. Algorithmic complexity is such a large part of a fancy university education that I just don’t understand how they could come up with swifts feature set if they knew it would come back and royally bite them. What an I missing? What is the backstory?

Im guessing:

The post Next Apple is entirely dependent on llvm. The hardware is tuned to its outputs. The devX is based on generating it.

Apple 15 years ago was getting worried people are not learning C in school anymore. They were learning python and ruby and js.

Swift exists as a way to market llvm as a tool chain to that market of programmers.

My views are informed by years of talking to Apple and build-for-Apple engineers.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair a LazyVStack handles cell reuse and unloading automatically which is why offscreen content that was previously viewed further back on the list will only maintain the root level state (children in the view hierarchy may and will lose state in order to save memory and energy). How that data is loaded and how you key off Identifiable is also important. Apple’s own documentation discusses this in detail and fo…

Where do you see that it does cell reuse? It does not... Their docs only talk about lazy loading, not reuse or unloading, eg: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/creating-p... This is also why LazyVGrid/LazyHGrid are unusable as replacements for UICollectionView Yes you can replace SwiftUI with UIKit + AppKit - replace the navigation, the text rendering, the text editing, the collection views, etc. edit…

I’m on a phone which means digging through Apple docs or WWDC-ascii isn’t fun. But for my recent Insta-like infinite feed on iOS this was very helpful:

https://fatbobman.com/en/posts/tips-and-considerations-for-u...

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#33
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair a LazyVStack handles cell reuse and unloading automatically which is why offscreen content that was previously viewed further back on the list will only maintain the root level state (children in the view hierarchy may and will lose state in order to save memory and energy). How that data is loaded and how you key off Identifiable is also important. Apple’s own documentation discusses this in detail and fo…

Where do you see that it does cell reuse? It does not... Their docs only talk about lazy loading, not reuse or unloading, eg: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/creating-p... This is also why LazyVGrid/LazyHGrid are unusable as replacements for UICollectionView Yes you can replace SwiftUI with UIKit + AppKit - replace the navigation, the text rendering, the text editing, the collection views, etc. edit…

Well the good news is you can keep using UICollectionView or MyFancyReuseView anywhere in the stack or tree of SwiftUI.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People I know who are iOS developers say differently. The Swift language itself is bloated? Compared to what? Golang?

there's a meme that it has too many keywords, but this criticism is shallow. it also grew a lot of features quickly to prioritize SwiftUI support perhaps with unnecessary language complexity as a result. I'm an iOS dev full-time now (bootstrapped) and SwiftUI is definitely not production ready if it means that it can be used without needing UIKit introspection hacks. I like it and ship all my work with it, but it is…

IMO UIKit is not production ready without Core Animation hacks.

At least you have the option in all cases.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People I know who are iOS developers say differently. The Swift language itself is bloated? Compared to what? Golang?

there's a meme that it has too many keywords, but this criticism is shallow. it also grew a lot of features quickly to prioritize SwiftUI support perhaps with unnecessary language complexity as a result. I'm an iOS dev full-time now (bootstrapped) and SwiftUI is definitely not production ready if it means that it can be used without needing UIKit introspection hacks. I like it and ship all my work with it, but it is…

Yeah. You can get far using SwiftUI as your scaffold but you'll need to have introspection and/or UIKit components to do any app of reasonable complexity.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#36

The Swift compiler is still the only compiler I know that times out. Algorithmic complexity is such a large part of a fancy university education that I just don’t understand how they could come up with swifts feature set if they knew it would come back and royally bite them. What an I missing? What is the backstory?

C# can also do that - there's a general problem there with combinatorial explosion when you combine function overloading with generics and lambdas.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#37
post #29

I like SwiftUI, reactive frameworks just make sense to me for UIs. It also interfaces with UIKit in a pretty nice way so you don’t have to commit to one or the other. I’m a newer iOS dev though, I’ve heard many complaints from more experienced devs.

I have encountered the infamous

> The compiler is unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time; try breaking up the expression into distinct sub-expressions

a lot. And it’s impossible to debug.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/652691

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#38
post #25

> we decided to test a sharp pivot just before shutting it down: rename the app, change the concept from a photo vault to a converter disguise, and sell encryption as a feature. I’m not really convinced that by just changing those you can suddenly get a lot of downloads.

Positioning/messaging matters a lot!

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#39

I gave up on mobile app dev years ago. To Apple, I'm not giving you $100 per year for four people to play my hobbyist games. Not to mention getting my account approved in the first place was such a horrible process. They can and will deny your app for random reasons. I don't know how any independent developer really wants to base their entire income around such madness . What they want is multi-billion companies publ…

I have a hard time taking people seriously who make such a huge deal out of the developer account pricing. A hundred bucks per year just isn't much money, I'm sorry, maybe it's my privilege talking, but if you're getting into iOS development you have, at base, one mac and one iDevice, if for NO other reason than development and testing of the app you want to make. The cheapest Mac available new is $600, and the cheapest iDevice is the iPad, for $349, or the iPhone SE, for $429. At minimum to get started as an iOS dev then requires an investment of just shy of a grand, and like, I don't particularly like that, but to then turn that around and be like "but this $99 per year subscription is ridiculous" is just... what!?

I don't consider myself a huge "project guy" either but I do tinker, and I absolutely CRUSH $100 per MONTH in terms of buying shit to fiddle with, from Raspberry Pi's to 3D printer parts, to new PC peripherals I wanna try, etc. etc. I struggle to conceive of someone in this space to whom $99/year for an Apple dev account is just this unbearable outlay.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#40
post #29

I like SwiftUI, reactive frameworks just make sense to me for UIs. It also interfaces with UIKit in a pretty nice way so you don’t have to commit to one or the other. I’m a newer iOS dev though, I’ve heard many complaints from more experienced devs.

I have encountered the infamous > The compiler is unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time; try breaking up the expression into distinct sub-expressions a lot. And it’s impossible to debug. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/652691

that just means you have too many items together. break them up into smaller components or use something like a Group and that solves it. not a big mystery
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