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Lots of people mentioning AppCode as a replacement, but damn JetBrains apps suck if you're used to macOS. Basic things like windows misbehaving, poor multi-moni

Lots of people mentioning AppCode as a replacement, but damn JetBrains apps suck if you're used to macOS. Basic things like windows misbehaving, poor multi-monitor support (yes, really), and being unusably slow for almost every aspect of the user interface. I could go on, but if you hate Xcode I think you'll find AppCode to be just a different set of crap. If you like using a Mac you'll positively hate AppCode. I personally have little problem with Xcode now. My recommendations would be: don't use the built-in source control integration, it mostly sucks. Get an M1/M2 Mac, the speed boost is great. Use a lighter weight editor (not IDE) for editing data files, large text files (>5k lines) and for anything that's not Swift/Obj-C/UI work. And lastly, stay up to date. Xcode has crashed much less for me on 12/13/14 than it did on ~9/10/11.

danpalmer 4y ago
More nuanced ideas... I set up my keyboard shortcuts to be as close to VSCode as I could so that Xcode and VSCode were very similar to write code in. I learnt the shortcuts for the UI - toggling panels and things, that was quite beneficial. Another approach is to find the bits that are _great_ and that you don't get with other platforms. The debugging, particularly UI debugging with the visual hierarchy is great. When you have a good set of schemes set up for different purposes, potentially tied in to scripting in the build process, you can get quite a flexible system for running apps under different environments.
Larrikin 4y ago
I've never used Jet Brains products on anything besides MacOS for close to a decade and have been doing professional Android development with Android studio for almost that long. I don't agree with any of your complaints and find it hard to believe they were ever true unless you used their products an extremely long time ago before they got popular. I had to use XCode in grad school for a single iOS class and ended up switching to app code for any parts of the assignments I could. At work the developer that switches back and forth between iOS dev and Android dev and he has a similar work flow of doing as much as possible in AppCode until forced to use XCode.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  I use Android Studio on a ~weekly basis, and have tried to get into PyCharm many times. It's clear that the JetBrains team have a very different view of what UX is and should be than Apple and most developers targeting macOS. The fact that JetBrains uses its own UI toolkit is the cause of a lot of the friction I experience, it's buggy on multi-monitor systems, focus works in a different way interrupting many micro-interactions. The pseudo-windows-in-a-window model feels wrong on macOS, it's the only application I know like it and it's a very Windows like model. People value different things, and I know many get lots of value out of JetBrains products. I just suspect that most people working on a Mac because they like Macs will not align well with the JetBrains products.
  - mobiledev2014 4y ago
    Also a cross platform mobile dev, couldn't agree more. Feels like I'm in a different OS when I have Android Studio full screen. There are some things I like about it but if I could stick 100% to iOS strictly from a devex point of view I would.
- gumby 4y ago
  Like danpalmer I can't stand the jetbrains tools I've used (PyCharm, IntelliJ). Just seems like a lot of clicking and inconsistent interface. I use Xcode but do most of my code editing, building and debugging in Emacs; I have to use Xcode directly for all the UI plumbing. The best I can say is a weak, "not as bad as jetbrains"
princevegeta89 4y ago
Not sure if you had any setup issues, but Jetbrains IDEs have been just as great on Mac OS as on Windows or Linux. In some ways, they were even better vs Windows/Linux because of the better font rendering as a result of Retina + the high resolution displays. The only change I had to make was the set the keymap to classic(was used the classic layout on Windows). Everything else worked just great. On the contrary, XCode seemed to be incredibly feature crippled and going backwards (in terms of how they have a counter-intuitive design for the average developer). If It wasn't for the iOS work I had to do, I would have never even opened that IDE for a second time. I hated how Apple forced us to stick to Xcode and change our orientations and get used to their IDE, without leaving a second option...... until AppCode finally arrived. This is the best thing that happened to iOS development. Similar to Android finally partnering with Jetbrains to get out the Android Studio. Long live Jetbrains.

danpalmer 4y ago

More nuanced ideas... I set up my keyboard shortcuts to be as close to VSCode as I could so that Xcode and VSCode were very similar to write code in. I learnt the shortcuts for the UI - toggling panels and things, that was quite beneficial. Another approach is to find the bits that are _great_ and that you don't get with other platforms. The debugging, particularly UI debugging with the visual hierarchy is great. When you have a good set of schemes set up for different purposes, potentially tied in to scripting in the build process, you can get quite a flexible system for running apps under different environments.

Larrikin 4y ago

I've never used Jet Brains products on anything besides MacOS for close to a decade and have been doing professional Android development with Android studio for almost that long. I don't agree with any of your complaints and find it hard to believe they were ever true unless you used their products an extremely long time ago before they got popular. I had to use XCode in grad school for a single iOS class and ended up switching to app code for any parts of the assignments I could. At work the developer that switches back and forth between iOS dev and Android dev and he has a similar work flow of doing as much as possible in AppCode until forced to use XCode.

danpalmer 4y ago
I use Android Studio on a ~weekly basis, and have tried to get into PyCharm many times. It's clear that the JetBrains team have a very different view of what UX is and should be than Apple and most developers targeting macOS. The fact that JetBrains uses its own UI toolkit is the cause of a lot of the friction I experience, it's buggy on multi-monitor systems, focus works in a different way interrupting many micro-interactions. The pseudo-windows-in-a-window model feels wrong on macOS, it's the only application I know like it and it's a very Windows like model. People value different things, and I know many get lots of value out of JetBrains products. I just suspect that most people working on a Mac because they like Macs will not align well with the JetBrains products.
- mobiledev2014 4y ago
  Also a cross platform mobile dev, couldn't agree more. Feels like I'm in a different OS when I have Android Studio full screen. There are some things I like about it but if I could stick 100% to iOS strictly from a devex point of view I would.
gumby 4y ago
Like danpalmer I can't stand the jetbrains tools I've used (PyCharm, IntelliJ). Just seems like a lot of clicking and inconsistent interface. I use Xcode but do most of my code editing, building and debugging in Emacs; I have to use Xcode directly for all the UI plumbing. The best I can say is a weak, "not as bad as jetbrains"

princevegeta89 4y ago

Not sure if you had any setup issues, but Jetbrains IDEs have been just as great on Mac OS as on Windows or Linux. In some ways, they were even better vs Windows/Linux because of the better font rendering as a result of Retina + the high resolution displays. The only change I had to make was the set the keymap to classic(was used the classic layout on Windows). Everything else worked just great. On the contrary, XCode seemed to be incredibly feature crippled and going backwards (in terms of how they have a counter-intuitive design for the average developer). If It wasn't for the iOS work I had to do, I would have never even opened that IDE for a second time. I hated how Apple forced us to stick to Xcode and change our orientations and get used to their IDE, without leaving a second option...... until AppCode finally arrived. This is the best thing that happened to iOS development. Similar to Android finally partnering with Jetbrains to get out the Android Studio. Long live Jetbrains.