Swift Development for iOS – The Good, Bad, and the Latest

### 2. The Other Side of Swift Having mentioned the pros, let’s discuss the disadvantages of Swift programming language. #### a. Still a Young Language There is no doubt that the language has progressed full-throttle, but it is still considered in its nascent stage, especially in comparison to Objective-C. This is why issues that need quick resolution crop up from time to time. Many of the available resources and tools dedicated to earlier Swift versions sometimes become incompatible with the newer releases. #### b. Very Few Native Libraries and Tools The notable downside of Swift — it still does not support enough native libraries. Although memory management may help developers with dynamic libraries, missing out on native libraries can be a mistake. The same problem lies with the native tools, making them highly dependent on third-party tools, leading to compatibility issues. … #### d. No Backwards Compatibility for SwiftUI SwiftUI can be deployed on iOS 13 or its succeeding versions. macOS requires a 10.15 version or later; for tvOS, it is 13 or later; for watchOS, the version should be 6 and above. This implies that Swift UI is not backward compatible as the newer features do not run smoothly with the older versions. #### e. Poor Compatibility with IDEs and Third-Party Tools As we mentioned before, by and large, there is an incompatibility with third-party tools because of frequent updates causing the older tool compatibility to go defunct. This makes it very difficult to find the right tools. Apple’s official IDE, Xcode, isn’t great for native tools and support. Apart from this, developers also face issues with compilers, syntax, highlighting, autocomplete, and even refactoring tools.