Is Kodeco Still Worth the Subscription for Apple Developers?

[rufy]

I have been a member of this community for a very long time, going back to the raywenderlich.com days — probably since around 2009 or 2010.

Over the years, this site has been one of my favorite resources for learning Apple development. What I particularly appreciated was the way topics were taught: carefully, step by step, starting from the basics and gradually moving toward more advanced concepts.

Tutorials, books, and later video courses often gave me something that Apple’s documentation, Stack Overflow, random blog posts, and other resources could not provide as effectively: a structured learning path.

I am still a paying subscriber today, but I am approaching the point where I need to decide whether renewing my subscription still makes sense.

My subscription costs me roughly €300 per year, so this is not an insignificant decision.

And the reason I am questioning the renewal is not simply the price. It is the combination of several problems I increasingly encounter when trying to use Kodeco to learn or stay up to date with Apple development.

1. Too much Apple development content is outdated

Apple development changes quickly, but some of the existing material now feels significantly behind the current state of Swift and Apple’s platforms.

Swift 6 is an obvious example.

With stricter concurrency checking, concepts such as Sendable, actor isolation, global and shared state, and concurrency safety can affect code that was perfectly acceptable in older Swift versions.

As a result, even relatively simple code patterns shown in older tutorials may now produce compiler errors, warnings, or require architectural changes that the tutorial does not discuss.

This creates a serious problem for someone who is trying to learn.

If I follow a tutorial and the code no longer works correctly with the current version of Swift, I have to stop and determine whether:

• I misunderstood the lesson;

• I made a mistake;

• the API has changed;

• Swift’s concurrency model has changed;

• or the tutorial itself is simply outdated.

For a paid educational platform, I think there needs to be a clear strategy for reviewing, updating, replacing, or retiring material when fundamental changes make it obsolete.

I do not expect every old article to be rewritten forever. But I do expect a paid learning platform to make it reasonably clear which material is still current and to provide modern replacements for important topics.

2. SwiftUI and UIKit are both recommended, but there are no truly parallel learning paths

Kodeco’s introductory material often encourages developers to learn both SwiftUI and UIKit.

I think that is good advice.

However, the learning library does not seem to consistently support that recommendation.

If a developer is encouraged to understand both frameworks, it would be extremely useful to have parallel material covering the same concepts.

For example:

• how to implement a feature in SwiftUI;

• how to implement the same feature in UIKit;

• what architectural differences exist between the two;

• when the underlying Apple frameworks are the same and only the UI layer changes.

That kind of parallelism would make it much easier to learn both frameworks properly.

Instead, I often find a tutorial about a subject implemented in SwiftUI without an equivalent UIKit version, or vice versa.

That makes it difficult to build a complete understanding of both technologies.

3. Some courses mix SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit in ways that make the learning path inconsistent

A related issue is that sometimes a broader topic is covered across several tutorials or lessons, but the technologies used change along the way.

One part might use SwiftUI, another UIKit, and another AppKit.

Of course, some subjects are inherently platform-specific, and I do not expect artificial equivalence where it does not make sense.

But where the same concept can reasonably be taught across different UI frameworks, I would expect the learning path to be more coherent.

If I begin learning a subject using SwiftUI, I should ideally be able to continue exploring its related subtopics using SwiftUI.

The same should be true for UIKit and, where appropriate, AppKit.

Otherwise, the library starts feeling more like a collection of individual articles than a structured educational system.

4. Some basic and practical topics appear to be missing entirely

Another problem is that there are subjects that I would consider fairly fundamental for real-world Apple development, yet I struggle to find a complete Kodeco-style tutorial about them.

A simple example would be:

How do I build a custom camera interface with a live camera preview and an overlay on top of it?

This is the kind of practical feature that can introduce several important concepts in a natural way: camera permissions, AVFoundation, preview layers, view hierarchy, orientation, overlays, SwiftUI/UIKit interoperability, state management, and so on.

I would expect a mature Apple development learning platform to have tutorials covering practical scenarios like this from beginning to end.

And there are other similar gaps.

One of the reasons I historically valued Ray Wenderlich/Kodeco was precisely that I could search for a subject and often find a well-structured tutorial that started from the basics and guided me through a complete implementation.

I am finding that experience less consistently today.

5. This directly affects the value of the subscription

For me, all of the points above lead to one practical question.

Is Kodeco still providing enough value for me to justify paying approximately €300 per year?

I do not subscribe simply to have access to a large archive of old tutorials.

I subscribe because I expect Kodeco to help me do two things:

1. learn subjects that I do not yet know through structured, step-by-step material;

2. stay reasonably current with modern Apple development as Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit, Xcode, and Apple’s frameworks evolve.

The freshness, completeness, organization, and consistency of the content are therefore not secondary issues.

They are a major part of what determines whether the subscription is valuable.

If I increasingly need to leave Kodeco and use other resources because the relevant tutorial is outdated, incomplete, written for a different UI framework, or simply does not exist, then naturally I have to question what I am paying the subscription for.

About AI

I also want to address something that often comes up when discussing technical education today.

Yes, AI has become extremely useful, and I use it as well.

But I do not consider AI a replacement for a well-designed educational resource.

Given the choice, I would still prefer to start with a carefully written, technically reviewed, structured tutorial that teaches me a subject step by step.

After that, I can use Apple’s documentation, AI, forums, Stack Overflow, and other resources to investigate specific questions or go deeper.

But if the structured tutorial does not exist, or if it was written several Swift versions ago and no longer works correctly, then of course I will turn to AI or another resource.

That does not necessarily mean developers no longer want tutorials.

It may simply mean that they cannot find a sufficiently current tutorial to use.

What I would like to hear from Kodeco

I am not writing this to criticize individual authors or editors.

I have learned an enormous amount from people who have contributed to Ray Wenderlich and Kodeco over the years, and I am grateful for that work.

But as a paying subscriber, I think the responsibility for the overall quality, maintenance, organization, and direction of the content library ultimately belongs to Kodeco as a platform.

So before my next renewal, I would genuinely like to understand Kodeco’s plans.

In particular:

• Is there a systematic plan to review and update Apple development content for Swift 6 and modern Swift concurrency?

• Is outdated content going to be updated, replaced, retired, or at least clearly identified as outdated?

• Are there plans to create more coherent and parallel SwiftUI/UIKit learning paths?

• Is there a strategy to avoid fragmented courses where related subjects unexpectedly switch between SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit?

• Is Kodeco actively identifying important gaps in the Apple development library and commissioning new practical tutorials to fill them?

• More broadly, what should an Apple developer paying for a subscription today realistically expect from Kodeco over the next year?

I am asking because I would genuinely prefer to have a reason to renew.

I have been using this site for many years, and I still believe strongly in the kind of teaching that made Ray Wenderlich and Kodeco valuable: structured explanations, real projects, progressive learning, practical examples, and material that helps developers understand not just what code to write, but why.

But at approximately €300 per year, I need to evaluate the subscription based on what it offers me today and what I can reasonably expect from it going forward.

I am not looking for an explanation that producing tutorials, books, and videos takes a lot of time. I already understand that.

Nor am I looking for an explanation that authors and editors have other professional responsibilities, or that AI is changing how developers learn.

Those things may all be true, but they do not answer the question I need to answer as a customer.

What I would like to know is:

What is Kodeco’s concrete strategy for making the subscription remain valuable to Apple developers who want both to learn new subjects and to stay current?

I would particularly appreciate a response from someone who can speak on behalf of Kodeco’s leadership or content strategy, because the answer will genuinely influence my decision about whether to renew my subscription.

Best Regards

[jessehilton]

I think it depends on how you use the subscription. If you’re actively learning Swift/iOS, Kodeco still offers a large library of courses, books, and structured programs, including current SwiftUI and Apple-focused content.

For someone who only needs occasional tutorials, a subscription may be harder to justify. But if you regularly use the books, videos, and learning paths, the all-access model can still be useful. I’d probably base the decision on how much of the library you actually use rather than the subscription alone.

[rufy]

Thanks for the reply.

I agree that how much someone uses the library obviously matters, but I think this is somewhat different from the question I was trying to raise.

The amount I use the library is not independent from the quality, freshness, and completeness of the content.

If I search for a topic and find an up-to-date, structured tutorial that teaches it properly, then I use Kodeco.

If I search for a topic and find that the relevant material is several Swift versions old, does not take Swift 6 concurrency into account, only covers one UI framework, switches between SwiftUI/UIKit/AppKit across related lessons, or simply does not cover the topic at all, then naturally I end up using another resource instead.

So saying that the value depends on how much of the library I use risks reversing the cause and effect.

One of the reasons I may use the library less is precisely because of the issues I described.

I also do not doubt that Kodeco still has a large library. My concern is not primarily the size of the library.

For a paid learning platform, especially at roughly €300 per year, what matters to me is how much of that library is still relevant to modern Apple development and how consistently new and existing material is maintained.

That is why I was hoping for an answer to the more specific questions in my original post.

For example:

• Is there a systematic plan to update important Apple content for Swift 6 and strict concurrency?

• What happens to tutorials that are no longer technically current?

• Are more parallel SwiftUI/UIKit learning paths planned?

• Is there an effort to make broader courses more consistent instead of having related subjects split across different UI frameworks?

• How does Kodeco identify important gaps in its Apple-development library and decide what new material should be created?

• What should an Apple developer subscribing today realistically expect in terms of new and updated content over the next year?

Those answers would help me much more than simply looking at how much of the existing library I currently use.

I am trying to decide whether Kodeco can continue to be one of my main learning resources for Apple development, rather than simply an archive that I occasionally consult.

That distinction is what will determine whether the subscription is worth renewing for me.

[rufy]

Another example of the problem I mentioned in my original post is outdated downloadable projects.

I’m currently developing an iOS app and wanted to refresh my knowledge of Collection View compositional layouts, so I went back to this Kodeco article:

Modern Collection Views with Compositional Layouts

I downloaded the accompanying project and tried to open and run it with Xcode 27, but unfortunately the project no longer builds.

I’ll attach a screenshot of the error below.

Of course, I understand that this is an older article. But this is exactly the kind of issue I was referring to in my original post.

The value of a technical learning library is not only in how many tutorials or projects it contains, but also in whether those resources can still realistically be used with current development tools.

I went back to Kodeco specifically because I wanted to refresh my knowledge of a topic that is still relevant to iOS development. Instead of being able to concentrate on the subject itself, I first have to figure out how to repair or migrate the old project before I can even use the tutorial.

For me, this is directly related to the question I originally raised about the value of the subscription.

If older but still relevant tutorials remain available as part of the paid library, what is Kodeco’s approach to keeping their downloadable projects usable with current versions of Xcode and Swift?

This is another concrete example of why I am trying to understand whether Kodeco can still be relied upon as an up-to-date learning resource for Apple developers before I decide whether to renew my subscription.