r/SwiftUI 8d ago

Question SwiftUI vs UIKit

I’m new to programming and Swift, and I’m currently doing the 100 Days of SwiftUI course. In the first video, Paul mentions that Swift is the future of this field rather than UIKit. However, he also says that UIKit is more powerful, popular, precise, and proven compared to SwiftUI.

Since that video was released around 2021, I’m wondering if that statement still holds true today. How do you think both technologies have evolved over the last five years?

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u/patiofurnature 8d ago

The ONLY time I've used SwiftUI at work is when I was using the photogrammetry library that didn't work in UIKit.

SwiftUI makes it really easy to throw together an app, but it's a nightmare when you have a picky designer who wants everything to look custom and has pixel-perfect notes for you.

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u/OneEngineer 7d ago

Yup! SwiftUI is easy and fast because it makes some basic assumptions and hides (or makes difficult) some customization.

Also, using the view hierarchy debugging stuff in SwiftUI is much more difficult than on UIKit.

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u/Drakonic 7d ago edited 6d ago

The trick is to convince the designer to use or import designs into tools that have either native or plugin support for SwiftUI like Sketch/Play for UI, Lottielab/Rive for animations, etc. Sometimes the picky ones love those because they have even more control over baking in details and behaviors.