Why I Like iOS Development
I realized the other day why I think I like iOS development so much. It cuts down on the number of decisions I have to make. For me, that’s huge.
The happy path just makes my life easier. It’s pretty easy to land on Swift, Xcode, and SwiftUI. It’s also made easier because I actually like writing Swift code.
Compare that to web development. The options and decisions can be overwhelming. You’re probably going to need to use JavaScript. But, Angular, React, Vue, Svelte, Qwik, Solid, or the next thing? Keep it simple and use plain HTML and AlpineJS or Petite Vue? Do you use a meta-framework like Next, Nuxt, SvelteKit, or Astro? Which editor? VSCode, Webstorm, Nova, Vim, Neovim, Zed, Helix? Which acronym are you going to choose? SPA, SSG, SSR, PWA, MPA? Gonna dive in and use TypeScript? And what about this HTMX I’ve been hearing about?
A similar number of questions come to mind when I think of writing a server. There’s an endless list of languages that you could use. Do I use Swift, Go, Java, Ruby, Python, JavaScript with Node, TypeScript with Deno? GraphQL, REST, RPC? SQL or NoSQL? Use Docker? Where do you even host it?? Skip it and try to use Firebase or Supabase or PocketBase?
It may be silly, but these are literally the questions that keep me up at night. As you might be able to guess, I struggle to make decisions. If I’m going to invest in something, I want it to make the best decision I can. But with limited time to explore and experiment, I don’t want to waste time going down a wrong path.
So that’s one of the main reasons I like iOS development. A huge number of questions are just immediately answered for me. I just open Xcode and go. I haven’t reached that point in web development—which is a bit funny because that’s my job. But, a lot of my next ideas are going to require more than just an iOS app. They are going to need backend components too. So I feel ticking clock or an impending doom on figuring some of this stuff out.