My HONEST opinion about UIKit vs SwiftUI in 2023

The debate between learning SwiftUI or UIKit is an ever-changing landscape. In this short clip, I give my updated thoughts as of late 2022.

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Book and learning recommendations that help out the channel if you decide to purchase (Affiliate Links):

Paul Hudson's Hacking With Swift:

Donny Wals - Combine:

Mark Moeyken’s SwiftUI Books:

Ray Wenderlich Books:

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[bitwisedevs]

Wow that was short yet agreeable in many ways. As a beginner I was eager to catch up with SwiftUI but just like what you said on your other video, skipping fundamentals have its own downside in a long run than drilling it

[alldaybrekkie]

I agree with what you said, but youve dodged the ultimate question there. Whats the future? The future is SwiftUI. And fundamentally, its hard. My advice, as a principle iOS dev with 12 years experience, is to go with SwiftUI, and Combine, and functional declarative programming. Theres a huge amount to understand in both UIKit and SwiftUI, but the difference is like that between internal combustion engines and electric motors for cars: why would you learn how to create an internal combustion engine when its clear the future of cars is electric motors?

[TtnKolonyasi]

This question was scratching my head for the past month thank you Sean

[captainmichaelj]

I stay as where I am...UIkit for complex iPhone applicaions, and SwiftUI for watch applications (that are bound to have simple processes)

[Jump_Jay]

Thank you for that!! I was so intimidated/overwhelmed with both, but this puts me a little at ease. 🙂✌️

[davidlintin]

I’m still all in on UIKIT. it’s tried and tested (mostly) so as a beginner I know that there won’t be many system errors or hacky work arounds. I imagine SwiftUI to be complete by 2024.

[mr_Multitask]

Thank you Sean! 🙏 I just was in such state) Now I will go on a favourite way - SwftUI!💪

[rankmacro]

I started iOS development because of SwiftUI - I love it! But when I got my first internship, UIKit is used over 90% of the time. So I am learning both, UIKit because I need it at work and SwiftUI - simply because I love it. It’s pretty exhausting, but I am making progress at both. Is it still bad and I should drop one for another (in this case drop SwiftUI)?

[MostCedric]

I can do both, but I prefer UIKit (at least for the base project, individual reusable views are nice in SwiftUI), I am planning to convert a big project completely written in SwiftUI in 2019 into UIKit. The problem with SwiftUI is new features are only compatible with the latest iOS, clients always want support as many as old OSs possible and there are deprecated APIs every year, it's frustrating to maintain.

[abdulsamadsalam]

well usually a lot of companies now a day are using uikit, i think it's related to version support issues which is (SwiftUI) is currently have and some other issues like not too much compatible with some design patterns, as an iOS developer we are using UIKit for our company :)

[okjosh]

Just started learning and doing swiftui only. It is coming very easy and I love it. I have no intention to find a job in this field, just want to make my own apps.

[GoeHybrid]

Two years ago I learned enough SwiftUI to join a project. Then, a lead dev decided that swiftui's navigation was trash and implemented the navigation in uikit. Then he quit. I am now stuck with an app that is half of everything, not knowing how to properly support it and how to improve further as an ios developer. I should have stayed with react-native...

[vebbis]

Why debate. Both are awesome together. Views that aren't super-complex which is at least 50% of my views are SwifUI and the rest are UIKit. Also starting with nearly zero experience in UIKit and a lot of experience in SwiftUI made UIKit so much easier. You are already so used to doing MVVM, state-driven UI, and handling Combine/Concurrency.

[BenC.handle]

If you are focused on learning one, as you take notes, you can comment which articles have info on both. That will save you time in the future, if you need fo “switch sides”.

Since WWDC22, a noticeable number of Apple developer docs now reference them both. (Note: not always clearly labeled, and not always included in the same order)

[gjermundification]

That said both can co exist, I use UIKit for drill downs in data, while I use SwiftUI for graphing at the end of the drill down, somewhere between step 4 and 10 of the drill down depending on the depth of data.. Then again I do mainly databases, no games.

[muncho]

Good advice Sean✨ Both Frameworks are Awesome.
SwiftUI makes it easier to focus on the Business logic by making View codebase of the app smaller and easier to organize.
On the other hand developing with UIKit deepens knowledge of Reference semantics, which by its own is a quite useful skill in OOP.
I was quite skeptical when the SwiftUI was firstly introduced, but the last two WWDC-s made it clear that SwiftUI is the future of iOS development and Apple devs are putting tremendous work to fill the functionality gaps between the two frameworks.

[rainbowdiy]

Kindly make swiftui calendar view tutorial with adding events functionality

[xingzhexin]

My biggest challenge was probably the language Swift. First there was string index before after and offset, then there was all those optionals and optional chaining and unwrapping. Took me a long time to get used to things.

[danielniels]

hi im a student new in iOS Development by joining the Apple Developer Academy. they recommend me to start with SwiftUI, also some said that Apple is migrating from UIKit to SwiftUI. but here in my country, i saw LinkedIn, like all the entry level iOS developer requires UIKit. and it kind of makes sense, because i heard that it is an "expensive" thing for a Company to migrate due to the something called "Code Legacy"...

would you please talk about this or do you already have a video?? thank you. 🙏

[VladislavVaz]

can someone help me please ..
i have a SWIFTUI application with a flow as follows: A(landscape also when I navigate back from C to B it should turn back to landscape as B is in landscape. (I am using NavigationLink in my application to navigate)How do I achieve the portrait lock in swiftUI.


i tried the .onAppear{} and .onDisappear{} method.. (firstly it is no longer available on ios 16 and secondly it gives a choppy animation where the view does not expand fully to take the new rotated screen size; there is white space after it rotates)