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I don’t know if this is Swift’s fault, per se but I find Xcode to be a real pain to use. There’s something about the Apple Way for UI/UX that just doesn’t jive

I don’t know if this is Swift’s fault, per se but I find Xcode to be a real pain to use. There’s something about the Apple Way for UI/UX that just doesn’t jive well with an IDE experience. I find myself constantly jockeying around the various windows and panes within Xcode that I usually never have to bother with inside of Visual Studio.

gwking 5y ago
Xcode's faults preceded Swift by many years.
- gurkendoktor 5y ago
  Some, yes. But in my experience, Xcode is/was amazingly responsive right until the first Swift file or IBDesignable class is added to a project. Then something happens in the background and everything starts to crawl.
kennywinker 5y ago
There is swift language tooling for vscode, if you’re so inclined.
drclau 5y ago
If you develop for iOS|macOS professionally, you may be interested in Jetbrains' AppCode [0]. Note: I'm not connected in any way to Jetbrains, and I have not used AppCode myself, but I used other tools from them, and they're quite competent, I'd say. [0]: https://www.jetbrains.com/objc/ https://www.jetbrains.com/objc/
- w0mbat 5y ago
  Apple professionals use Xcode. Using different tools than the ones Apple uses leads to a lot of problems that Apple are not interested in fixing. The days when a company like Metrowerks or Symantec could be a viable third party IDE supplier are long gone.
  - jakeva 5y ago
    I don't do Apple development as much anymore, but I used to write in AppCode a lot and used Xcode only to build.
    - w0mbat 5y ago
      Alongside Xcode I find BBEdit very useful for editing data files, diagnosing merge problems, writing shell scripts, etc. I still do almost all my real coding in Xcode to use the autocomplete. Tower is useful for anything non-trivial in Git. For basic operations the Xcode Git support is useful.
  - selcuka 5y ago
    I believe AppCode uses XCode behind the scenes for most of the magic stuff anyway. It's just a more capable facade.
  - dagmx 5y ago
    AppCode uses xcodebuild etc under the hood and xcodeprojects to configure the ide. You aren't going to get any bugs in the compilation etc process than you would in Xcode.
  - bdittmer 5y ago
    Xcode as an IDE...and at a certain scale a build system like bazel or buck.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
tathisit 5y ago
Not an apple user, but I've heard that xcode is an ide+build system. Which means that you can't compile an application if you don't have the exact version of xcode installed. How true is that?
- sedatk 5y ago
  They're part of Xcode package but they can also be installed separately IIRC.
- ladberg 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "the exact version of xcode installed" but you can compile most applications with any recent version. Of course when new SDKs are released you need to update the Xcode version but it's not a big deal (and maybe a once a year thing). It is an IDE + build system but you can totally write code in a different editor and compile it on the command line with xcodebuild.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
Probably depends a good deal on what you're used to. By far, the IDE I've spent most time in through my career is Xcode (or its predecessor Project Builder) and have found it's not too bad once you've got a grip on the things it doesn't "like". In fact I enjoy working in it more than I do the much-vaunted Jetbrains IDEs, even when configured to use Xcode key shortcuts (thus short-circuiting the familiarity problem a bit). The faster autocomplete is nice, but a lot of the "smarter" parts end up getting in my way or doing the wrong thing more frequently than they are helpful. I can't really compare with Visual Studio since I've never really seriously developed for Microsoft platforms. I will say though that Xcode got noticeably worse after Interface Builder got merged into it, and I think much of its woes stem from that merger even today. IB should've been left a separate tool, which is particularly evident now that XIBs and Storyboards are yielding to SwiftUI in the nearish future.
- tcldr 5y ago
  Agreed. I’d love to see Apple break the core of Xcode out into a separate app with a pared down feature set (text editor, file explorer, debugger, console, etc) give it LSP support - and then make it extensible and blazing fast. Basically VSCode but mac native. I really don’t want all the visual editors and previews. Interface builder, Core Data Model Editor, even Swift UI previews feel so half-baked that they’re effectively unusable anyway. Swift packages are a delight because they’re purely text based. As coders, we’re working with text all day. It doesn’t make sense to context switch to dragging boxes around a canvas to wire things up. I’d rather they invested the engineer time into the core editor and made it rock solid. My hunch is that they spend so much time on them because they look great in demos, but when it comes to the end of the beta cycle and the tool is still broken, it leaves a bitter taste. Simplify it.

gwking 5y ago

Xcode's faults preceded Swift by many years.

gurkendoktor 5y ago
Some, yes. But in my experience, Xcode is/was amazingly responsive right until the first Swift file or IBDesignable class is added to a project. Then something happens in the background and everything starts to crawl.

kennywinker 5y ago

There is swift language tooling for vscode, if you’re so inclined.

drclau 5y ago

If you develop for iOS|macOS professionally, you may be interested in Jetbrains' AppCode [0]. Note: I'm not connected in any way to Jetbrains, and I have not used AppCode myself, but I used other tools from them, and they're quite competent, I'd say. [0]: https://www.jetbrains.com/objc/ https://www.jetbrains.com/objc/

w0mbat 5y ago
Apple professionals use Xcode. Using different tools than the ones Apple uses leads to a lot of problems that Apple are not interested in fixing. The days when a company like Metrowerks or Symantec could be a viable third party IDE supplier are long gone.
- jakeva 5y ago
  I don't do Apple development as much anymore, but I used to write in AppCode a lot and used Xcode only to build.
  - w0mbat 5y ago
    Alongside Xcode I find BBEdit very useful for editing data files, diagnosing merge problems, writing shell scripts, etc. I still do almost all my real coding in Xcode to use the autocomplete. Tower is useful for anything non-trivial in Git. For basic operations the Xcode Git support is useful.
- selcuka 5y ago
  I believe AppCode uses XCode behind the scenes for most of the magic stuff anyway. It's just a more capable facade.
- dagmx 5y ago
  AppCode uses xcodebuild etc under the hood and xcodeprojects to configure the ide. You aren't going to get any bugs in the compilation etc process than you would in Xcode.
- bdittmer 5y ago
  Xcode as an IDE...and at a certain scale a build system like bazel or buck.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

tathisit 5y ago

Not an apple user, but I've heard that xcode is an ide+build system. Which means that you can't compile an application if you don't have the exact version of xcode installed. How true is that?

sedatk 5y ago
They're part of Xcode package but they can also be installed separately IIRC.
ladberg 5y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "the exact version of xcode installed" but you can compile most applications with any recent version. Of course when new SDKs are released you need to update the Xcode version but it's not a big deal (and maybe a once a year thing). It is an IDE + build system but you can totally write code in a different editor and compile it on the command line with xcodebuild.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

Probably depends a good deal on what you're used to. By far, the IDE I've spent most time in through my career is Xcode (or its predecessor Project Builder) and have found it's not too bad once you've got a grip on the things it doesn't "like". In fact I enjoy working in it more than I do the much-vaunted Jetbrains IDEs, even when configured to use Xcode key shortcuts (thus short-circuiting the familiarity problem a bit). The faster autocomplete is nice, but a lot of the "smarter" parts end up getting in my way or doing the wrong thing more frequently than they are helpful. I can't really compare with Visual Studio since I've never really seriously developed for Microsoft platforms. I will say though that Xcode got noticeably worse after Interface Builder got merged into it, and I think much of its woes stem from that merger even today. IB should've been left a separate tool, which is particularly evident now that XIBs and Storyboards are yielding to SwiftUI in the nearish future.

tcldr 5y ago
Agreed. I’d love to see Apple break the core of Xcode out into a separate app with a pared down feature set (text editor, file explorer, debugger, console, etc) give it LSP support - and then make it extensible and blazing fast. Basically VSCode but mac native. I really don’t want all the visual editors and previews. Interface builder, Core Data Model Editor, even Swift UI previews feel so half-baked that they’re effectively unusable anyway. Swift packages are a delight because they’re purely text based. As coders, we’re working with text all day. It doesn’t make sense to context switch to dragging boxes around a canvas to wire things up. I’d rather they invested the engineer time into the core editor and made it rock solid. My hunch is that they spend so much time on them because they look great in demos, but when it comes to the end of the beta cycle and the tool is still broken, it leaves a bitter taste. Simplify it.