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Man, I'd be really wary of trying this, even if I knew most programmers hated Xcode. I don't think you could find a worse platform to build dev tools for than A

Man, I'd be really wary of trying this, even if I knew most programmers hated Xcode. I don't think you could find a worse platform to build dev tools for than Apple's. For one thing, it's awfully complicated: think about stuff like the iPhone simulator. For another, Mac users are notoriously finicky. Personally, if you came up with an alternative that was great in almost every way, but was as graphically ugly as Eclipse, then I wouldn't switch. I'm kind of sad that years of Mac use has made me care about this kind of thing, but there you go. Finally: Codewarrior. When Apple made the switch to x86, the Codewarrior guys decided that was one sea change too many, and gave up the fight. On the other hand, you could argue that that project was mismanaged for many years before that, and was likely to topple sooner or later.

cageface 15y ago
Yeah I think this is a losing proposition, just like trying to compete with iTunes on the Mac. The Jetbrains guys may find a niche here with their Objective-C IDE, but they've already done so much of the groundwork that it's much less risky for them.
mikeash 15y ago
Regarding CodeWarrior, the project was definitely on life support for years beforehand, as they never really put their weight behind the transition to OS X. Regarding the x86 transition, they probably wanted out by that point but they really had no choice, as they had sold their x86 compiler tech (IIRC to Nokia) just a couple of months before.
jarin 15y ago
I think it MIGHT be worth it for some specialized niche that isn't covered yet, but yeah I've tried several Rails-oriented IDEs like RubyMine, etc. and nothing really "feels" right compared to XCode. For some reason, using Eclipse doesn't really bug me that much on Windows, but on OS X it's just really frustrating. I'd argue that it would be very difficult to make a better XCode or a better vim, but there's probably room for a better TextMate or "XCode for ____".

cageface 15y ago

Yeah I think this is a losing proposition, just like trying to compete with iTunes on the Mac. The Jetbrains guys may find a niche here with their Objective-C IDE, but they've already done so much of the groundwork that it's much less risky for them.

mikeash 15y ago

Regarding CodeWarrior, the project was definitely on life support for years beforehand, as they never really put their weight behind the transition to OS X. Regarding the x86 transition, they probably wanted out by that point but they really had no choice, as they had sold their x86 compiler tech (IIRC to Nokia) just a couple of months before.

jarin 15y ago

I think it MIGHT be worth it for some specialized niche that isn't covered yet, but yeah I've tried several Rails-oriented IDEs like RubyMine, etc. and nothing really "feels" right compared to XCode. For some reason, using Eclipse doesn't really bug me that much on Windows, but on OS X it's just really frustrating. I'd argue that it would be very difficult to make a better XCode or a better vim, but there's probably room for a better TextMate or "XCode for ____".