SwiftUI vs UIKit: THE GOOD AND THE BAD

Apple released iOS 13 on 19th September 2019 with a new framework, SwiftUI.

Much noise was made about the release of SwiftUI, as it promises to be an innovative framework that will supersede UIKit due to its simplicity and speed of coding.

Before i buy into detail i would like to form one thing clear: SwiftUI may be a remarkable interface framework, and is 100% absolutely getting to be the longer term of app development on Apple’s platforms. However, if you would like to create great apps today – or indeed any point within the next one to 2 years approximately – you furthermore may 100% absolutely need knowledge of UIKit, particularly if you intend to make app development your career.

SwiftUI is a completely new framework that allows you to design and develop user interfaces declaratively and with less code. Unlike UIKit, which is usually utilized in conjunction with storyboards, SwiftUI is totally software-based. However, SwiftUI syntax is extremely easy to know, and a SwiftUI project is often quickly viewed using Automatic Preview so it will save a lot of time in developing.

In this blog, I’ll specialise in the differences between SwiftUI and UIKit.

SwiftUI was created for cross-platform use to create applications with less code than UIKit but with an equivalent complexity.

Goods of SwiftUI

Let’s start with the goods of SwiftUI:

• SwiftUI is easy to learn, and the code is simple, neat and clean.
• It can be mixed with UIKit using UIHostingController.
• SwiftUI provides mechanisms for reactive programming enthusiasts with BindableObject, ObjectBinding, and therefore the whole Combine framework.
• It allows you to easily manage themes. Developers can easily add dark mode to their apps and set it as the default theme, and users can easily enable dark mode. Besides, it looks awesome.
• SwiftUI no longer needs Interface Builder. It was replaced by Canvas, an interactive interface editor. When writing code, the visual part in Canvas is automatically generated, and once you create visual presentation elements, they automatically appear within the code.
• It offers Live Preview. This is a really convenient and progressive thanks to see the results of code execution in real time without having to create . I’m unsure if it somehow affects the processor. So far, I’ve noticed a delay provoked by the utilization of Live Preview, but I feel Apple will soon make improvements.
• Your application will no longer crash if you forget to update the @IBOutlet association with the variable.
• There’s no AutoLayout or related problems. Instead, you employ things like HStack, VStack, ZStack, Groups, Lists, and more. Unlike AutoLayout, SwiftUI always produces a valid layout. There’s no such thing as an ambiguous or unsatisfiable layout. SwiftUI replaces storyboards with code, making it easy to make a reusable view and avoid conflicts related to the simultaneous use of 1 project by the development team.

Bad of SwiftUI

• Limited API coverage : For example, if you want to show items in a grid you would use UICollectionView in UIKit, but SwiftUI has no equivalent. Or if you wanted to let the user enter multiline text you would use UITextView in UIKit, but SwiftUI has no equivalent either.
• Limited adoption : SwiftUI was only announced at WWDC2019, and is available in iOS 13 devices or later.
• Limited support : UIKit has been around over ten years now, which means

a) almost every problem you might face has probably already been faced and solved by others, and

b) there are lots of libraries out there that provide extensions and customizations.

Conclusion

No! SwiftUI is great fun to work with, and you can build marvelous things with it. The whole rest of this book is designed to help you get started with SwiftUI as quickly and efficiently as possible – I wouldn’t have written it if I didn’t think SwiftUI was awesome.

What I’m trying to say is that the existence of SwiftUI hasn’t somehow rendered UIKit obsolete: if you intend to get an iOS development job within the next three years, knowing how to use UIKit will either be a firm requirement or a strong bonus.

So, to answer the question directly: yes should get busy learning SwiftUI because it is the future of app development on Apple’s platforms, but you still need to learn UIKit because those skills are going to be useful for years to return .