Skip

Dev tools

cross-platform mobile framework

SHOW HN2024

322points
118comments
#178of 3,515 in 2024
Top 6%of 2024 by points

How HN took it

CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments

20 positive, 40 neutral or asking, 4 mixed, 13 critical, out of 77 comments about the project. Thread score +0.15.

Idea: 10 for, 4 againstExecution: 1 for, 3 againstPerformance: 3 for, 1 againstPricing: 0 for, 2 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Keeps developers in Swift with native controls and no embedded runtime

    From 3 comments
    • Loving this so far, I've been working with it for a week now. I have a personal app, DownPay for iOS, that is built with SwiftUI that I want to bring to Android. I tried going…
      LifeUtilityApps on HN
    • Sounds amazing. From a career point of view it is good for a dev as they click up native skills instead of some abstraction layer, while being able to do cross platform. Been a…
      langcss on HN
    • Damn, this sounds too good to be true. Really nothing to add here except than keep pushing! This fixes the big painpoint that nowadays' cross-platform frameworks come with…
      flawn on HN
  • Tight Xcode integration makes it feel like magic

    From 2 comments
    • As others, from the videos, I really like the tight Xcode integration. Reading the FAQ I do have few concerns, 1. Open-source, it mentions GPL forms, is there a reason MIT not…
      rock_artist on HN
    • Loving this so far, I've been working with it for a week now. I have a personal app, DownPay for iOS, that is built with SwiftUI that I want to bring to Android. I tried going…
      LifeUtilityApps on HN

Objections

  • Limited coverage of Apple frameworks such as StoreKit, WebKit and CryptoKit

    From 1 comment
    • Most existing iOS apps are likely to use a suite of Apple platform frameworks beyond simply pure Swift and SwiftUI. For those cases, Skip's approach seems to be a range of Skip*…
      happybuy on HN
  • Maintenance burden of re-implementing Apple APIs on Android

    From 2 comments
    • I can appreciate the effort of trying to make it easier for iOS developers to also target Android. However, there is no magic solution to cross-platform development. The effort…
      isodev on HN
    • I'm not sure I see the point, other than this being aimed at first world (see US/EU) businesses who solely have iOS application's and want to convert those to Android. So if you…
      mad_tortoise on HN
  • Existing native Android or cross-platform tools like Flutter and KMP are better for Android-first teams

    From 1 comment
    • I'm not sure I see the point, other than this being aimed at first world (see US/EU) businesses who solely have iOS application's and want to convert those to Android. So if you…
      mad_tortoise on HN

Requests

  • Support for more Apple frameworks such as MapKit, StoreKit and WeatherKit

    From 2 comments
    • Most existing iOS apps are likely to use a suite of Apple platform frameworks beyond simply pure Swift and SwiftUI. For those cases, Skip's approach seems to be a range of Skip*…
      happybuy on HN
    • As others, from the videos, I really like the tight Xcode integration. Reading the FAQ I do have few concerns, 1. Open-source, it mentions GPL forms, is there a reason MIT not…
      rock_artist on HN
  • Better C++ interop via JNA

    From 1 comment
    • You are correct that JNA's C++ integration – while possible – is not exactly seamless. It is an area that we are actively researching better solutions for.
      marcprux on HN
  • Examples of existing apps migrated to Skip

    From 1 comment
    • Good to see Skip on the home page! We were evaluating Skip just a couple weeks ago for a side project. The issue we ran into is that we've already built a native iOS app with…
      wirelesspotat on HN

Questions

  • Does it work with existing apps built with SwiftUI and UIKit

    From 1 comment
    • Good to see Skip on the home page! We were evaluating Skip just a couple weeks ago for a side project. The issue we ran into is that we've already built a native iOS app with…
      wirelesspotat on HN
  • How platform-specific UI differences such as back buttons are handled

    From 2 comments
    • Hello, this looks like a cool product, congratulations. How does it handle the different UI guidelines on the two platforms? I have not been using Android for some years, but the…
      giamma on HN
    • Sounds amazing. From a career point of view it is good for a dev as they click up native skills instead of some abstraction layer, while being able to do cross platform. Been a…
      langcss on HN
  • Can Swift PM dependencies be used natively on Android

    From 2 comments
    • I've been following this for a while now. Skimming the page, it appears the answer is no, but I'll ask anyway: If all of the project's dependencies are pure Swift (+Foundation)…
      RedComet on HN
    • Not yet, but this is a capability that we are actively investigating.
      marcprux on HN
  • How Material You dynamic colors are handled

    From 1 comment
    • How does it handle cases like Material You Dynamic Colors? I am thinking about making an app, and we want to support the best offerings from each OS. So the dynamic colors is…
      charliesbot on HN

Alternatives named

  • Flutter

    From 2 comments
    • I'm not sure I see the point, other than this being aimed at first world (see US/EU) businesses who solely have iOS application's and want to convert those to Android. So if you…
      mad_tortoise on HN
    • Sounds amazing. From a career point of view it is good for a dev as they click up native skills instead of some abstraction layer, while being able to do cross platform. Been a…
      langcss on HN
  • React Native

    From 2 comments
    • Loving this so far, I've been working with it for a week now. I have a personal app, DownPay for iOS, that is built with SwiftUI that I want to bring to Android. I tried going…
      LifeUtilityApps on HN
    • I'm not sure I see the point, other than this being aimed at first world (see US/EU) businesses who solely have iOS application's and want to convert those to Android. So if you…
      mad_tortoise on HN
  • Kotlin Multiplatform

    From 2 comments
    • I'm not sure I see the point, other than this being aimed at first world (see US/EU) businesses who solely have iOS application's and want to convert those to Android. So if you…
      mad_tortoise on HN
    • How does it handle cases like Material You Dynamic Colors? I am thinking about making an app, and we want to support the best offerings from each OS. So the dynamic colors is…
      charliesbot on HN
  • Xamarin

    From 1 comment
    • Looks very cool! Looking at the docs gives a good overview of how it works. Regarding transpilation and the tradeoffs (https://skip.tools/topic/transpilation-tradeoffs/), does…
      banashark on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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