iOS Storyboards Should I use them or not? [duplicate]

Question

I am new to iOS development (No apps created yet), but I ask for advice from my friend that has really high rated apps on the market. He said not to use storyboards.

As much as I want to take his advice, they seem really helpful.

• Is this something that can cause problems for my app in the future?
• Is there any reason I may want to not use storyboards?

Coming from an Android background, I don't see why I should use them.

Answer 1

I tend to avoid storyboards for anything apart from perhaps a quick prototype. If you know you have a very simple app which isn't going to get complicated, and you're the only developer, storyboards might be ok.

Here are a few blog posts that detail some of the pain points when using storyboards:

• http://toxicsoftware.com/uistoryboard-issues.html

• http://blog.waynehartman.com/archive/2012/01/07/uistoryboard-on-ios-5-the-good-the-bad-and-the.aspx

Both of the above are a bit dated, but I believe the pertinent points still hold true.

Note that in theory you need to use a storyboard(s) to get static tables, which can be useful. To get this benefit, you could put only the static tables in storyboard files (note: you can have multiple storyboard files in an app) and use xibs or just code for the rest of the UI.

Answer 2

I'd recommend against using either storyboards or Interface Builder.

• You'll learn Objective-C faster if you spend more time using it. Switching between IB and code, you'll have two things to learn. The context switching will still slow you down later on.
• Nibs and storyboards are big XML files that don't play well with source control; if you're working on one at the same time as someone else, you will get merge conflicts.
• You can't see everything that's going on at once in IB, so it's hard to track down things like layout problems.
• You can't search or replace in IB the way you can in code
• Nibs and storyboards put your view logic in your controllers. Whether that's a problem for you depends on how much of an MVC purist you are.
• If you want to port your apps to/from Android, IB will make it much harder.

This all comes from experience. I started out running a small software team developing iOS apps using IB (storyboard wasn't out yet) and within a year it had caused so many problems that I'd had to forbid its use. Our productivity went way up when we stopped using it.