
Ask HN: Bad time to start iOS/Swift development? - jamil7
I&#x27;ve spent a long time doing fullstack web development, with the last five years focusing a lot on React &#x2F; Node &#x2F; Python. While I&#x27;ve enjoyed it I&#x27;ve become a little burned out on the web and it&#x27;s direction in general, especially javascript. I&#x27;d like to try out something different.<p>I recently picked up swift in my spare time and have built several small apps with it for iOS and macOS. I&#x27;ve enjoyed the experience a lot, especially the language itself and would like to pursue it further. If I wanted to pick up some freelance work to test the waters, whats the market like? is it better to offer something cross platform like RN or Flutter? or is it a reasonable strategy to go narrow and focus purely on swift and it&#x27;s associated frameworks?.
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bsvalley
Mobile wasn't that hot in 2010, then in 2013 it reached its pick (companies
shifting their entire businesses to mobile). Finally, in 2018 it slowed down
by a lot. We've noticed a similar trend with AI lately. AI is at its pick
right now. Today, companies have dedicated mobile teams that are fairly
independent from the rest. They aren't connected directly to the business of a
company but they still have a huge impact for sure. You'd be surprised to
learn that 80% of the traffic of company X comes from mobile and that mobile
team has only 10 folks in it... Very lean, versus 100 folks working on Web and
infrastructure.

If you switch today it's fine, you'll get a lot of opportunities as an iOS dev
assuming you're really good at it. The bar is higher than Web, usually iOS
devs know their stuff pretty well and ask tricky questions. If you've only
built little apps, you may have to study a lot more (more advanced topics)
before applying to jobs.

If you're looking for freelance jobs only, you'll be fine as long as you're
not working with technical people. You can still hack your way around and
build apps that aren't really optimized. As long as it does the job.

~~~
jamil7
Thanks for the detailed answer, regarding the downturn in interested I guess I
figured as much. It seems that it's focus has shifted to extending and
supporting established products rather than being a flagship platform in
itself. On the other hand the web market is absolutely saturated right now, my
gut feeling was that while mobile has slowed down, it's not going away
completely and there might be a viable niche there to work on while everyone's
attention is so focused on web.

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mchannon
While there is some work for iOS/Swift-only dev, most of it doesn't occur in a
vacuum.

The itch the market really wants scratched is a one-stop-shop where they can
get both mobile, web, and support services at once. Consider pitching your
services that way. The contracts are bigger in scope and longer-term (because
there's more to do, more moving parts, and fewer people to share it with).

The number of people who can do full-stack web, plus iOS, with experience in
both, is a small minority of both communities.

Throw in Android and server/devOps and the set gets even smaller.

Throw in experience in what's hot right now, AI and ML, and you're in purple
squirrel territory. While people are always looking for that purple squirrel,
they don't always pay as well as companies looking for specialists in just a
subset of that menagerie.

~~~
jamil7
This makes sense thanks, so offering a wider array of services is potentially
a better strategy, given my background and experience. I imagine being able to
build the API/backend layer, web and mobile client is desirable to some and
you're right in that it would give one longer running contracts with a lot
more work. So to reiterate your points, study more mobile, leverage existing
skillset and throw in some AI/ML. I guess this is the broad vs narrow topic.
How important is it to have finished apps in the respective app stores? I have
years worth of web work to display, most of it still in production but nothing
concrete for mobile.

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m0llusk
Why focus on some niche environment provided by a specific company according
to their whims and needs when there is a vast body of languages, tools,
libraries, and frameworks available in the free and open space? With the
Internet dominating all applications are basically just stores of data with
their related organization, logic, and interfaces. If you want to add a pretty
face to such an app using languages, tools, libraries, and frameworks
primarily developed and owned by a company you can do that with minimal risk
as long as the core is outside that.

~~~
jamil7
It's a fair point and something I think about. For what it's worth I feel
exploiting a development niche is a reasonable strategy and the core language
is open source. What would you pick if you wanted to change directions?.

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demygale
I’ve been in mobile development for a long time. I do iOS and swift now.

I think it’s a good market. There are a number of places that do native
development. I have always bet against cross platform mobile solutions. It
doesn’t interest me as a developer, and I don’t think it’s a good experience
for the user.

~~~
jamil7
Thanks for the feedback!

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saluki
There is still a big market for native iOS apps, especially to connect to web
applications.

Even smaller companies are interested in an iOS and Android apps for their web
application.

So I expect there are lots of freelance opportunities.

~~~
swah
But smaller companies also want to save money and think RN is good enough.

I actually learned RN, developed two apps in it, and kinda hate it, but like
the idea of delivering the same app on both platforms, of course. Which I
didn't do yet, because we don't have Macs at my work (previous work, got fired
friday).

~~~
jamil7
Sorry to hear you got fired, good luck finding a new gig. I guess RN or
Flutter make sense if you're building for both, I'm not totally against it I
just like the idea of using the tools the platform gives you. But I admit it
might not be the most practical approach.

