(Talk) iOS & Android & Swift & Kotlin July 27, 2017 ios, android, swift, kotlin, talk

[Oh look, another talk comparing modern mobile technologies! This time, the primary audience is iOS developers who are familiar with Swift and intrigued by Android. If you’re a Kotlin-curious Android or Java developer, you might get more out of my previous talk, Kotlin For Fun And Profit.

Last week, I crashed my local CocoaHeads meetup and gave a talk about… Android!

Sort of…

Several key aspects of the iOS and Android developer experiences have converged within the last year:

The languages with which we may now express our application logic (Swift and Kotlin) are syntactically and philosophically similar;

The layout tools with which we define our application UI provide options that prioritize performance and power (Auto Layout and ConstraintLayout ) as well as options that prioritize convenience and easier maintenance ( UIStackView and LinearLayout );

The IDEs that support our development efforts have continued to borrow the best features from one another: recent examples include Android Studio offering integrated run-time view debugging, and Xcode (re-)adding powerful refactoring capabilities.

This means there’s never been a better time for developers familiar with one ecosystem to learn the other. And you should: it’s a lot easier than learning your first native platform, and with a little effort you’ll quickly find yourself:

saving time by solving problems once, not twice,

more easily maintaining consistency when building dual-platform apps, and

becoming a more flexible (and therefore more valuable) employee,

all without sacrificing any of the benefits of native development.

Not convinced? Check out the video and slides from iOS & Android & Swift & Kotlin for concrete comparisons that demonstrate just how similar iOS and Android development look in 2017:

Slides