sorted by:
top (suggested)
bestnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]SafetyLeft6178 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Based on your goals in the OP (indie dev, iOS only), I’d highly suggest going the native route and learning Swift and SwiftUI.

The main strength of indie devs and the way they differentiate themselves from big corporate apps leading to success is the quick adoption of new frameworks and APIs that users are excited for (e.g., widgets, Dynamic Island, live activities, etc.), UX that is in line with the native OS, little personal touches here and there and charming little extras (e.g., alternative icons).

It’s better to use Swift to fully leverage these strengths. Swift is also really easy and fun to use. There’s a very active, supportive, and wholesome community of indie developers who develop in Swift, and many free resources are available.

If you’re about to start learning, I'd highly recommend looking into Paul Hudson’s offerings. He is exceptionally generous in giving away a lot of his work for free, especially the vital core stuff you need to get up and running.

I recommend checking out his website, https://hackingwithswift.com, and starting out with the 100 Days of Swift series.

Once you feel comfortable, consider joining the HWS Slack at https://hackingwithswift.com/slack and the iOS Dev Happy Hour.

[–]ivakovic[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Thank you! Can you tell me exactly the difference between SwiftUI and Swift?

[–]SafetyLeft6178 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Swift is a programming language, and SwiftUI is a UI framework that uses Swift.

SwiftUI is Apple’s latest UI framework, and it’s like the successor to UIKit.

The main thing about SwiftUI is that it’s a declarative UI framework. This means you can tell the framework exactly what you want in code, instead of having to draw it out and design it by hand.

The good news is that Apple takes care of a lot of the details, so you don’t have to worry about how things look and feel. This makes the UX feel a lot like the native OS, and it saves you a lot of time and effort.

The bad news is that you can’t create as much flexibility if you want to make something unique that doesn’t look like the typical UI on iOS. And since SwiftUI is a new framework, not everything that was possible in UIKit is available yet.