IOS framework questions welcome?

Using Swift
1

I just joined the forum and while browsing around the "Using Swift" category I noticed a thread that was discouraging discussion about specific framework questions. There was no definitive answer on the question of whether such questions are appropriate in the "Using Swift" category of this forum so I'm wondering if such questions are indeed appropriate here. I don't want to come here to ask those types of questions if I am going to be annoying everyone here.

2

I guess some people would be annoyed, many would ignore it, and some would try to help...
It might depend on the kind of question:
If it's about a framework that is written in Swift, there's even Related Projects - Swift Forums, and if the problem is tricky, that might produce better reactions than a crash due to obvious reasons.
For questions about Apple frameworks, I wouldn't hesitate to post them at stackoverflow, though.

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3

Personally, I prefer to discuss Swift in these forums, but feel free to ask questions.

However, for Apple platform specifics, such as questions about iOS or macOS development, you will probably get much better results from the Apple Developer Forums. Or even Stack Overflow.

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4

We generally encourage questions about specific libraries to be asked on forums dedicated to those libraries, like the Apple developer forums for Apple OS frameworks, or project-specific forums for various open-source projects. Here's why:

  • Most questions about how to use a library aren't specific to what language you're using it from. The people on project-specific forums are likely to be the people best able to help you even if none of them are using Swift.

  • Asking questions on project-specific forums about using their libraries from Swift acts to build a community of Swift users there. Your question directly helps other Swift users who visit those forums, and it encourages them to ask their own questions there, which might in turn help you. That community will be healthier if it's not split across multiple forums, and (because of the point above) it makes sense to prefer the project forums because most of the Swift users will also have non-Swift-specific questions.

  • For those same reasons, project maintainers are likely to get annoyed at the Swift project if we regularly act as an alternative forum for talking about their libraries, because it detracts from their community.

  • Building an active Swift-using community on the project forums for a non-Swift-specific library is a very effective way of communicating to the project maintainers that they have an active Swift-using community. To be frank, open-source projects often have a lot of fringe users, and it's hard for the core contributors to take them all equally seriously; seeing that they have a lot of Swift users, and that those users care enough to stick around, can help change their perception of you.

The exceptions, of course, are (1) libraries that are part of the Swift project or (2) libraries (generally Swift-specific ones) that host their forums here.

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