[seanalltogether]

I feel like the app developers who don't simply bite the bullet and use the technologies that Apple promotes inevitably dig themselves into a corner.

Programmatic layouts/constraints just crumble underneath you when Apple decides to make changes in each new version of iOS or introduces a new formfactor.

[nostrademons]

I think that's often true, up until the point in time where it isn't. :-)

I remember that when DHTML/Javascript was young, from 1998-2004, you used the features built into every browser or you'd find yourself painted into a corner with the next release. Java applets, VBScript, ActiveX, Flash, and numerous third-party plugins: all dead. And then suddenly, around 2005, Prototype/JQuery/YUI/Dojo all came out, and you were an idiot if you didn't use a third-party library. The pendulum is starting to swing the other way now that browsers are pretty reliably standards-based, but there are still a number of people who look at you funny when you suggest using vanilla JS.

I was a little young to remember, but IIRC the same thing happened with the PC: through most of the early 80s, if you didn't write in assembly and use the specific features provided by each vendor, your app didn't have a chance. Then 1990 rolled around, decent C/Pascal compilers came out, third-party class libraries took off, and you got left behind if you still coded in assembly. Then by the early 2000s things had centralized under Microsoft .NET again, but by then the web was taking off and nobody cared.

It seems like this is the pattern of most software platforms: for the first 10 years, you better code to proprietary APIs because you won't be able to accomplish anything otherwise, and if you do it'll be obsolete with the next OS release. For the next 10 years, an explosion of third-party frameworks takes off, and you pick the one that makes you the most productive. In the last 10 years, things centralize again under a monopoly vendor, but by then the platform is already getting obsolete. Not sure where we are in the cycle for iOS - we've probably got a couple years to go - but it looks like it may be happening in Android land already, with Dagger 2 and RxJava.

[lstamour]

Um, auto-layout, which this says it uses, is an Apple supported constraints system? https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...

[nostrademons]

I think grandparent poster is saying app devs should program directly to the built-in Apple syntax rather than using a third-party library which wraps it. Because if Apple comes out with extensions or changes, then anyone who uses Stevia will need to wait until the library incorporates them, losing their advantage to competitors in the process.

I sympathize somewhat with the grandparent poster's point, but it all depends on how likely Apple is to improve auto-layout vs. how many new developers need an easier layout system now. JQuery managed to become massively popular on the web, despite web browsers eventually adopting most of its innovations, because the browsers took years to incorporate its innovations (and sometimes never quite got the syntax right) while millions of people needed to make a webapp right now.

[lstamour]

I can see that now. Certainly anyone who worked with the HTML-based iOS components Facebook had back in the day was in for a shock later. I don't recommend using any iOS libraries you aren't prepared to upgrade/replace later -- and this includes Apple code too! Plenty of Apple APIs change every year, so... I'd hope somebody takes up the cause of updating this for as long as the API proves useful. :)