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Alex Black
Alex Black

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The Challenges of iOS Development for Android Developers

A little background on me. I've been an Android developer for the last 10 years, and in the last 2 years started diving into iOS development (mostly using SwiftUI) as well. Something that has stood out to me in the difference between developing on these two platforms is the community.

On android the platform is somewhat more chaotic in terms of API's changing very frequently and not always working as expected, but you know that you'll most likely be able to find a solution to any problem you run into or at-least find help. iOS on the other-hand seems to have much more stable API's but finding examples of how to solve seemingly simple problems is a nightmare more often than not.

Another great thing about how Android's API's are maintained: If I run into a bug or want a feature I can simply file a bug/feature request directly with google, and I know one of their developers will see it and at least read it. That's way more than I can say for Apple. If I have an issue or feature request I have literally no idea where to take it (let me know if there is a place).

Another massive difference between the two platforms is that on Android if I run into an issue that is very difficult and maybe no open source solution exists, I can simply look at the source code for every API and figure out exactly how it works, and maybe even extend it. On iOS this is not the case, all you get are header files. This is a very rough change especially since many times the iOS API documentation from apple can be cryptic and/or confusing.

I don't mean this post to be purely iOS bashing, since in a lot of ways iOS development is great, but I do think that there needs to be a better community around iOS. Why is it that it's so hard to find documentation on solving seemingly simple things. Really by far the best resource I've found is hackingwithswift.com if it wasn't for this site I'd certainly be lost.

I'm curious if this is a common perception from other developers or if I just haven't found the right place to find information yet. In the future I intend to write some posts on solutions I've come up with for seemingly common use cases in iOS since there seems to not be too many examples online outside of hackingwithswift

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