Today we'll tackle a common question from those beginning to learn iOS development:

The practical answer is actually a common idiom when building software: What's the simplest possible solution?

Let's look at the basics of table and collection views, then we'll circle back and learn how we apply that answer to our question.

UITableViews are all about vertically scrolling lists of content. They expect us to use them to display rows of content inside sections. We get a ton of conventional "iOS-native" feeling functionality for free such as group-style table views that look like iOS's settings app or system-standard accessory views.

In short: UITableViews give us a lot for free, but they expect us to think in their terms.

UICollectionViews are infinitely more customizable than Table Views. We can completely customize a collection view's layout, even animate between layouts.

UICollectionViews don't provide anywhere near as much functionality out of the box, but they offer an incredible amount of power and capability.

In many ways, Collection Views are the more-capable big sister to Table Views. They aren't constrained by "rows" or "accessory views". They are great for simple grids, all the way up to incredibly complex layouts.

Back to our original answer: What's the simplest possible solution?

We can now answer our question by rephrasing it: Given what I'd like to build, will a UITableView or a UICollectionView help me get there faster, with less (or at least simpler) code?

Building a Settings screen or vertical list of social media posts? A UITableView is probably the way to go.

Building a photo gallery, or perhaps a screen that needs to scroll content horizontally? We'll need a UICollectionView for those.

In either case, if we ever start to feel like we're fighting against UIKit, that's a good time to step back and re-evaluate.