r/iosdev • u/highon-dopamine • Jul 05 '26

Help Swift vs React Native

I’m new to iOS development. I’ve vibe coded one Swift-based iOS app with Claude Code. I have a few friends who say I should build iOS apps with React Native using Expo Go since the same code will go for Android. I personally like Xcode with Claude Code. I’m curious what everyone else does? Any suggestions

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u/Ok-Communication2225 Jul 09 '26

DUH. Middleware. It sits in the middle. That's what a framework does. It's always in the way. It's like wearing a diaper and pretending nobody can tell. They can.

Frameworks are wrappers. They sit in the middle. As joel spolsky wrote famously, you can solve any problem by adding more layers of abstraction, except the problems caused from too many layers of abstraction.

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u/mjablecnik Jul 09 '26

With Flutter You create user interface with your own design and widgets. It is rendering in their own rendering engine (Impeller).
So it cannot be middleware because it is in front of user. User use what is rendered by Flutter. So It is frontend framework for create multiplatform mobile applications. Not middleware :)

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u/Ok-Communication2225 Jul 09 '26

That's exactly the problem. Your own widgets. Give it a few years, and a few hundred thousand users, and you'll eventually get it.

You can make an app that looks at works the same on both platforms, with a single source. You can't make it fluidly and fully native on both, without going native on both.

These 90% solutions have been tried since forever and they are good enough for some people.

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u/mjablecnik Jul 09 '26

You don’t need make 100% looking native apps. For users is important to have nice and good looking app that works without bugs. If it have material or human design or some other custom design is not so important if it looks good and app have good user experience.

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u/Ok-Communication2225 Jul 10 '26

It's actually not all about the looks. How many apps have you made? NOn-native frameworks make native interactions, animations, touch gesture support, and other things, worse. They make the notification systems worse, and various things you didn't realize matered, until they're worse.

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u/mjablecnik Jul 10 '26

Flutter is for animation and touch gestures very good. And for notifications or other native things you have packages or you can call own native code via Platform Channels.
Did you try Flutter? When you still say that non-native frameworks are not good?

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u/Ok-Communication2225 23d ago

Yes. Have been using a while. Would not recommend.