SwiftUI, as a declarative framework heavily promoted by Apple, differs significantly in design philosophy from the traditional UIKit/AppKit. Even compared to other declarative frameworks, SwiftUI exhibits many unique functionalities and behavioral logic. In conversations with numerous SwiftUI developers, I’ve discovered that a substantial number misconstrue the framework, potentially hindering their deep understanding of SwiftUI’s essence.
This article aims to explore several common misconceptions to help developers better understand and utilize SwiftUI. We will dissect these misconceptions, including those about the perceived difficulty of learning SwiftUI, expectations of cross-platform development, the scope of framework capabilities, and misunderstandings about the amount of code involved. By clarifying these concepts, we hope to provide clearer learning directions and usage strategies for SwiftUI developers.
After the publication of this article, a few readers expressed doubts about the authenticity of the content, believing it might be AI-generated. This reaction may stem from the article’s title or writing style. In fact, I had already shared the core ideas of this article verbally on multiple occasions months before writing it.
In today’s era of increasingly prevalent AI-generated content, articles with a summarizing nature seem more likely to evoke such speculation. Ironically, an article aimed at clarifying misconceptions has led to new misunderstandings. This phenomenon highlights the complex information environment we currently inhabit.
Will generative AI be capable of offering unique insights in the future? I am both expectant and skeptical. If AI can truly engage in creative thinking, rather than merely integrating existing information, how should we then view the definition of “originality”?
Is SwiftUI Easy to Learn and Use?
Many documents and books introducing SwiftUI, to leave a strong impression, often showcase brief and understandable view code, highlighting SwiftUI’s powerful declarative layout capabilities. While effective, this approach might lead beginners to form incorrect perceptions.
Indeed, for beginners, a few hours of study can allow them to independently create views and interactions that previously took much longer to accomplish—an appealing experience. However, this ease of getting started can create an illusion that SwiftUI is easy to learn and use.
This illusion arises mainly from two factors: first, the advanced features of the Swift language make the declaration of views in SwiftUI appear more concise; second, Apple’s abstraction and encapsulation of many APIs allow beginners to easily handle simple scenarios.
However, when developers face complex layouts and interactions, if they do not deeply understand SwiftUI’s unique layout logic and internal mechanisms, they may be unable to accurately express their needs through these “simple” APIs. In such cases, some developers might mistakenly think SwiftUI’s capabilities are limited, without realizing that the issue lies in their shallow understanding of the framework.
Another characteristic of SwiftUI is that many components or pieces of code behave very differently in different contexts. Apple’s intent to lower the entry barrier by providing many default behaviors for layout containers and components also leads to confusion. When unexpected behaviors occur, developers might mistake them for SwiftUI bugs and look for workaround solutions, not realizing these are due to their insufficient understanding of the default rules.
Therefore, after gaining a basic understanding of SwiftUI, developers should actively delve deeper into its underlying principles, especially core concepts like layout logic and response mechanisms, to enhance their overall comprehension of SwiftUI.
SwiftUI’s learning curve is quite uneven. Getting started (more accurately, beginning to use it) is relatively easy, but mastering it (let alone becoming proficient) is quite challenging. SwiftUI can be described as a very beginner-friendly framework, but the lack of in-depth articles exploring its complexities, coupled with many developers not realizing its high potential, makes mastering SwiftUI quite difficult.
Write Once, Run Anywhere?
SwiftUI supports all platforms within the Apple ecosystem, which has always been considered one of its biggest highlights. However, when developers actually begin using SwiftUI to build cross-platform applications, they often find that reality falls short of their initial expectations.
In practical development, developers encounter many challenges. For example, many modifiers have specific platform restrictions, and the same code may behave very differently across platforms. Facing these situations, developers might question: Was Apple’s promise just a beautiful vision? Where did the well-known slogan “Write Once, Run Anywhere” go?
In fact, from the inception of SwiftUI, Apple made it clear that its philosophy is not “Write Once, Run Anywhere,” but rather ”Learn once, apply anywhere.” This subtle but significant distinction reveals Apple’s true intent: they encourage developers to thoroughly understand the core principles of the SwiftUI framework and then flexibly apply this knowledge to create the best user experiences, tailored to different platforms’ hardware characteristics and user habits.
This philosophy places higher demands on developers. When embarking on cross-platform projects or extending existing projects to more platforms, we need to deeply understand the specific behaviors of each component on different platforms, as well as the unique API features of each platform. Although this approach seems more complex, it allows us to more precisely leverage the advantages of each platform.
Compared to the traditional method of using different frameworks to develop applications for various platforms, SwiftUI’s approach to cross-platform development requires more upfront preparation. Developers may need to employ techniques like custom types and encapsulation to lay the groundwork for multi-platform code reuse. While initially more demanding, this method can help us build more flexible, platform-specific applications in the long run.
Although this approach is much more complex than the simple “Write Once, Run Anywhere” concept, it also brings significant advantages. Through this method, developers can better optimize code for different platforms’ characteristics, creating truly platform-appropriate applications that enhance the platform-specific attributes of the apps.
SwiftUI’s cross-platform development philosophy requires more effort but can also provide a higher quality, more tailored user experience for each platform. Understanding and embracing this point is crucial for correctly using SwiftUI in cross-platform development.
SwiftUI: More Than Just a UI Framework
Technically, SwiftUI is indeed a declarative UI framework. However, it is insufficient to view it merely as a UI framework. SwiftUI is closely linked to many new features of the Swift language, and Apple clearly considered the future trends and developer ecosystem when designing SwiftUI. To truly master SwiftUI, we need to adopt a more comprehensive perspective.
To effectively and expertly use SwiftUI, developers at least need to master the following:
- Swift’s modern concurrency model
- Proficiency in using Swift Package Manager (SPM)
- Knowledge of the Combine framework when needing to support older systems
Most importantly, only by adopting a fresh perspective to build SwiftUI projects can we ensure efficiency, scalability, and reliability in project execution. This means we need to rethink application architecture and development processes.
Interestingly, unlike other UI frameworks with officially recommended data flow management methods, Apple has not provided a standard data management template for SwiftUI. This approach gives developers greater freedom but also leaves some confused about where to start.
In reality, once developers understand SwiftUI’s response mechanisms and the various notification mechanisms provided by the Swift language, any data flow management method could be effective in SwiftUI. However, this also presents higher demands and challenges for developers.
Especially in special or edge cases, certain behaviors related to responses or memory releases might not align with developers’ intuitions and expectations. This further emphasizes the need for developers to have a comprehensive and in-depth knowledge structure to truly master SwiftUI.
SwiftUI is not just a UI framework; it represents a new paradigm for application development. It requires us to rethink how we build applications, manage data flows, and optimize performance. Only by embracing and applying this new way of thinking can we fully harness the potential of SwiftUI to create efficient, stable, and attractive applications.
SwiftUI: Not Just About “Less Code”
Although many promotional materials for SwiftUI emphasize “Less Code,” this does not mean that writing less code is the core goal of SwiftUI. In fact, in many cases, more code can lead to better results.
Compared to other declarative frameworks, SwiftUI usually requires less code to declare basic views. However, brevity does not equate to efficiency and should not be the sole pursuit.
Why more code might be better:
- Performance Optimization: Using
structinstead ofvarorfuncto declare frequently changing views, fully leveraging SwiftUI’s view optimization mechanisms. - Improving Compilation Efficiency and Success Rate: Splitting large views into multiple smaller views, reducing compile time, and avoiding type inference issues.
- Enhancing Cross-Platform Adaptability: Using custom types or encapsulation to improve code’s cross-platform compatibility.
- Improving Code Structure and Testability: Abstracting complex view states, simplifying view code while providing separate testing capabilities for states.
- Increasing Modularity and Maintainability: Using SPM to decouple view code from data management and other unrelated libraries, improving compile efficiency and preview success rate.
SwiftUI’s true advantage lies not in reducing code volume but in creating efficient, stable, expandable applications through reasonable code structures and best practices. Developers should balance code volume with these key objectives, rather than simply pursuing “less code.”
Conclusion
In this article, we explored several common misconceptions among SwiftUI developers. Although we did not provide specific technical solutions, by reexamining these concepts, we hope to help developers better understand the essence and potential of SwiftUI.
We believe that by readjusting their understanding and expectations of SwiftUI, developers can better handle the challenges encountered during learning and use. This not only aids in improving the development experience but also helps developers better leverage SwiftUI’s potential to create higher-quality applications.