Ask HN: Best way to build a mobile iOS app in 2020?

2 pointsra56y ago5 comments

I ask this as someone who is:

1) Very familiar with react native, its breakage, its dependency hell, and the struggle to get the most simple apps rolling

2) Slightly afraid of full-on XCode and Swift

3) Jaded from React Native, so slightly hesitant to jump onto Flutter

I realize that beggars can't be choosers, but what is the a great way to build mobile apps (iOS mainly) in 2020?

5 comments

notkaya6y ago

I'm very much a web developer, but I've been on a mobile iOS project for the past 6 months or so.

My team decided we didn't want to fight Apple, and went all in on xcode and swift.

The first month was rough because I do 90% of my development in vs code. Xcode is a lot upfront, but very powerful once you get the hang of it. Spending the time to learn how to use the storyboard properly has really paid off for us. Our designer loves it.

Overall, if you can spare the time, doing it Apple's way isn't too bad.

My team is pretty comfortable now, with the exception of managing our git. Storyboards can make merges almost impossible sometimes, and we really haven't figured out a good way to go about it. So if you're working with a large team this should be a huge con for going the swift route.

jamil76y ago

UIKit + SwiftUI and Combine if you're starting from scratch, plug the missing SwiftUI features with UIKit.

matijash6y ago

I never used but heard good things about https://expo.io/. Apparently they are good enough for simple apps, but might be too limiting for more advanced stuff.

__d6y ago

Xamarin / Mono / .NET? It's maybe a lower bar than leaping into XCode and Swift, and it's possible to deploy on both iOS and Android if using Xamarin.Forms ...

Not really a recommendation, but something to consider, maybe.

thijsvandien6y ago

This will be very hard to answer without knowing anything about the kind of app. So as always: it depends.

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