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What an incredible negativity here in the comments. I’d like to provide a counter and say that I’ve been developing in Xcode for a number of years now, and I th

by bartvk 6y ago

What an incredible negativity here in the comments. I’d like to provide a counter and say that I’ve been developing in Xcode for a number of years now, and I think it’s fine. Is it great? No. But it’s fine and I’m very productive. My projects are generally small, meaning not more than 100-150k lines, maybe that is what causes problems for other people? Anyway, I’ve had good, solid fun with SwiftUI in the most recent year or two. The Preview canvas didn’t always work, but I usually found a workaround.

akmarinov 6y ago
Pretty much this.
josephg 6y ago
> What an incredible negativity here in the comments This might seem strange, but I think the negativity here makes sense, and is justified on multiple fronts. On a technical front, Xcode is pretty awful. It’s slow and unstable, and seems to have only gotten worse over the last decade. Many comments here express this in detail. This matters so much because tools become an extension of our bodies. Using bad tools makes us feel ineffective, weak and slow. If I can’t trust Xcode to receive keystrokes (yes, a real bug I encounter frequently), my brain interprets that bug as me being physically impaired and unable to type. It’s awful. This is made so much worse because Xcode - and any bad product from Apple - betrays Apple’s promise to it’s customers. Apple’s promise is “we sell premium products which are worth the extra cost because they’re delightful. Buy from us and we’ll take care of you”. Steve jobs used to say this sort of thing quite explicitly. This is why people hold Apple to a higher standard - because Apple promises a higher standard with their branding and their prices. It wouldn’t matter so much if Xcode were part of an open ecosystem and we had choice - I wasn't angry a few years ago when Atom was laggy and slow. I just shrugged, uninstalled and used something else. But iOS devs are mostly locked in. They have nowhere to go. And practically speaking, people from all over the tech industry are on HN. Plenty of people at Apple are here - even if they can’t say so. Hopefully a bit of public shaming will be read by someone at Apple with the authority to right the ship. We can hope.

by bartvk 6y ago

akmarinov 6y ago

Pretty much this.

josephg 6y ago

> What an incredible negativity here in the comments This might seem strange, but I think the negativity here makes sense, and is justified on multiple fronts. On a technical front, Xcode is pretty awful. It’s slow and unstable, and seems to have only gotten worse over the last decade. Many comments here express this in detail. This matters so much because tools become an extension of our bodies. Using bad tools makes us feel ineffective, weak and slow. If I can’t trust Xcode to receive keystrokes (yes, a real bug I encounter frequently), my brain interprets that bug as me being physically impaired and unable to type. It’s awful. This is made so much worse because Xcode - and any bad product from Apple - betrays Apple’s promise to it’s customers. Apple’s promise is “we sell premium products which are worth the extra cost because they’re delightful. Buy from us and we’ll take care of you”. Steve jobs used to say this sort of thing quite explicitly. This is why people hold Apple to a higher standard - because Apple promises a higher standard with their branding and their prices. It wouldn’t matter so much if Xcode were part of an open ecosystem and we had choice - I wasn't angry a few years ago when Atom was laggy and slow. I just shrugged, uninstalled and used something else. But iOS devs are mostly locked in. They have nowhere to go. And practically speaking, people from all over the tech industry are on HN. Plenty of people at Apple are here - even if they can’t say so. Hopefully a bit of public shaming will be read by someone at Apple with the authority to right the ship. We can hope.