Item — HN Reader

Having written actual apps with AppKit, it is horrendously complicated for simple things.

Swift is incredibly better than ObjC on so many ways it’s just not comparable. I used it since day one and never looked back. (And I was deep into the ObjC ecosystem, having written very low-level frameworks, and having loved it.) Yeah, first versions of Swift were raw, but now it’s just THE language; I used for everything (obviously Apple soft frontend, but also the web, the backend, etc. Even android dev I would do with Swift though I do not have the occasion for now.)

Apple will never drop ObjC support IMHO. But most new frameworks will be Swift-only.

SwiftUI is a step backwards from AppKit in the sense that we lose control over what’s possible when using it exclusively. But 1/ it’s much simpler for doing simple things and 2/ we can drop down to AppKit when needed. All in all, it’s good that we have it.

1 comments

> But 1/ it’s much simpler for doing simple things and 2/ we can drop down to AppKit when needed.

New things (especially 12 years on) shouldn't be "do simple things simpler, and drop down to old ways for complex stuff". It should be "do complex things simpler".

I strongly disagree.After many years in software development, I'm sick of resolving the same issues all over again.Make me write less code, make me spend less time fixing it.That's what is increasing productivity and scope for my projects.

> I strongly disagree.

You strongly disagree with what? That new tools shouldn't just make simple things simpler?

> Make me write less code, make me spend less time fixing it.

But that's exactly where SwiftUI fails, doesn't it? The moment you step outside the "the only UI you can do is lists", you are exactly in the "write more code with weird failures" territory with "just fallback to AppKit for anything even slightly outside of the extremely limited sandbox".