I am beta-testing my first Android app, and have recently completed my second iOS app. Having taught myself how to program in both Swift and Java, I spent a lot of time lamenting the inability to easily convert code between the two. Sure, there are cross-platform solutions, but as an independent developer, I couldn’t afford to invest a ton of money in a paid system. Plus, I had already learned Swift, and this wasn’t helpful for many cross-platform solutions.
Below is a list-in-progress of concepts and objects that have parallels between the two operating systems and languages. Feel free to comment and make suggestions!
| iOS | Android |
| storyboard/nib | design/layout/xml |
| constraints | layouts |
| UIViewController | Activity/Fragment |
| UIView | View |
| UITableView | RecyclerView/LinearLayout |
| UICollectionView | RecyclerView/GridLayout |
| UIPickerView | Spinner |
| UITextView/UITextField | EditText |
| UILabel | TextView |
| UIButton | Button/ImageButton |
| UIImageView | ImageView |
| UISwitch | Switch |
| viewDidLoad() | onCreate() |
| viewWillAppear() | onResume() |
| viewWillDisappear() | onSuspend() |
| NSNotification.postNotification() | sendBroadcast() |
| NSNotification.addObserver() | BroadcastReceiver.onReceive() |
| dispatch_async() | AsyncTask() |
| Swift | Java |
| Class | Class |
| String | String |
| Int | int/Integer |
| Bool | boolean/Boolean |
| Array | ArrayList/[] — example: String[] |
| Dictionary | HashMap |
| for i in i..<count { } | for (int i=0; i<count; i++) { } |
| for item in array { } | for (String item : array) { } |
| if x == 5 | if (x == 5) |
| switch object | switch (object) |
| case: x = 4; break; |
case: x = 4 |
I hope this is helpful to some other beginning programmers! Reinventing the wheel for each device is hard enough…not even knowing what the wheel is called is even worse!