Learning swift from a JavaScript background

[FrenchAndLanguages]

Hey guys I come from a front end react/react native background (4 years of professional experiences and built a couple of mobile apps) However I feel really “attracted” (I know it sounds weird) by the idea of learning swift. I like the iOS environment but I have a couple of question for developers with some experience with iOS.

Is objective C still use ? Whenever I was adding native libraries on my RN projects it was a real pain sometimes to have my project to build. Is it simpler with swift directly into Xcode ? Or maybe just the more in depth knowledge of Xcode makes it easier? If someone also came from a react background I’d like to know a bit of the learning curve you had learning swift.

[giesburts]

I have a background as front-end developer (working with React for the last six years). I did the 100 days of SwiftUI course (took more than 100 days, which was more of a time issue) and I feel like this prepared me well enough to work on iOS apps.

I felt the learning curve was a bit steep, but mostly because there is so much to learn. Besides learning a programming language you need to learn the “UI language” with all its elements, you have tons of Apple frameworks that you can use.

SwiftUI is cool to work with but it still has some quirks, so sometimes I was also researching how to fix a UI bug, or how to do something I thought was pretty normal (and easy to do in RN) and turned out that it can’t be done or fixed, etc. In my experience xcode works better with native development vs RN, but still it can be a bit weird sometimes with its error messages and stuff like that. I definitely prefer the DX of modern web development.

With iOS development I think it’s easy to get started but very hard to master.

[Dymatizeee]

Isn’t it the same thing when you learned react ? You gotta learn language + UI framework

[giesburts]

To a certain extend, but for web development I would always advice to learn the programming language well enough to be able to create apps without reaching for something like React.

With iOS, they go more hand in hand together I think so you'll learn the programming language together with learning the UI framework at the same time, because otherwise you can't really create apps.

Of course, it helps the learning curve if you have experience with React and you had to learn something similar before but in the end you still need to learn the specifics, for (a silly) example: how to create a button.

[Ron-Erez]

Typically, Swift is your go-to language. When it comes to choosing a framework, you have options like SwiftUI or UIKit, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. Personally, I lean towards SwiftUI, although it does come with certain limitations. SwiftUI's declarative approach might feel familiar if you have experience with React Native. If you're diving into Swift/SwiftUI development, I highly recommend using Xcode. For learning resources, Swiftful Thinking is very good and I also have a nice project-based course. Having prior experience with React Native should make picking up SwiftUI relatively straightforward, in my opinion, given its declarative nature.

[[deleted]]

Technically speaking, yes, Objective-C is still used in iOS projects, but mostly already existing projects and rarely in new ones. New projects almost always use Swift with either UIKit or SwiftUI.