5 ms·

OT: Rant Xcode being loaded on my computer causes something akin to a kernel panic. Not the fun kind where you get to read a backtrace and feel something. The

OT: Rant Xcode being loaded on my computer causes something akin to a kernel panic. Not the fun kind where you get to read a backtrace and feel something. The existential kind. Every time it hijacks a .json or .xml file association, I experience a rage that hasn't been matched since the Emacs/vi wars ... and at least those were about editors that could open in under a geological epoch. I just want to look at a text file with pretty print. I do not need a 12GB IDE to render curly braces. cat has been doing this since 1971. Dennis Ritchie solved this. Why, Apple, in 40 years, could you not ship a lightweight dev-oriented text viewer? You had NeXTSTEP. You had the DNA of the most elegant Unix workstation ever built. And you gave us... this behemoth? An app whose launch time rivals a full Gentoo stage 1 install ( see: https://niden.net/post/gentoo-stage-1-installation https://niden.net/post/gentoo-stage-1-installation ) TextEdit is not the answer. I've used Xcode for native iOS development and honestly, once you get past the Stockholm Syndrome phase, it's just fine. - The interface is learnable. - The debugger mostly works. But the load times -- on every high-end MBP I've ever owned -- suggest that somewhere deep in the Xcode binary, there's a sleep(rand()) that someone committed in 2006 and no one has had the courage to git blame. FWIW, I fear someone here tells me I've been missing a launch flag. Alas, it's my truth and I can't hold it in anymore.

olivia-banks 9mo ago
I agree with you, it's infuriating. I think it's been loading faster recently (maybe?), but it still takes like 10 seconds. To set file association stuff more easily than with the Finder GUI, you can run (with https://github.com/moretension/duti https://github.com/moretension/duti): duti -s com.apple.textedit public.${whatever} all Where ${whatever} is in {plain-text, json, source-code, ...}. I'm sure there's a way to automate this through parsing `lsregister -dump`, but have a script I run on every Mac I have that sets TextEdit as the default instead of XCode for a bunch of file types :-)
DonHopkins 9mo ago
> sleep(rand()) You're being too kind. It feels like a 8 cores worth of parallel busy loops to me! I bet Alan Dye insisted they put it in there so users can pause their busy to gaze at and appreciate his artistically minimal unpainted Liquid Glass window frame.
- wlesieutre 9mo ago
  I like to take a few minutes to admire the content underneath/behind my sidebars
dylan604 9mo ago
I'm confused, how have you not reassociated the files with the app of your choosing? Is Xcode somehow changing associations back? Does it do it only at updates? As far as Apple providing anything, why are they the expected ones providing it? There are a gigabazillionumpteen text editors that can reformat JSON. I have Xcode, and have associated JSON with a different editor. Not once has it ever changed on me.
- nerdsniper 9mo ago
  There is a way to do it, but it’s not the most typical way MacOS users do it for everything else, which involves Right Click->Open With->Other->Always Open With. Xcode’s file associations are super aggressive. I believe that “Get Info”->”Open With”->”Change All…” still works, and there are command line methods or third party tools. This has driven me to madness too.
  - crazygringo 9mo ago
    Not something I've ever experienced. Open As... Always works just fine.
  - c-fe 9mo ago
    select in finder the file that currently opens with XCode, then press Cmd+i. It opens the information panel. There in the Open with section, you can chose the app and then also Change all to not use XCode.
  - dwaite 9mo ago
    > Xcode’s file associations are super aggressive. They are the same Info.plist format as every other MacOS application.
    - nerdsniper 9mo ago
      Something is different. Right Click->Open With->Other->Always Open With 100% did not have any effect when I needed it in the past. Not sure what current behavior is. This was a huge thing for me.
aniforprez 9mo ago
There was a time I was interested in building for MacOS. Installing, opening and trying to use Xcode killed that pretty quick. I've never seen an IDE this behind in terms of usability from the competition.
- reactordev 9mo ago
  This is why people hate porting to Mac. Because at some point they need XCode and XCode is horrible.
- someguyiguess 9mo ago
  Same experience. The 2009 version of Eclipse was more stable than modern XCode. And that’s saying something.
  - Insanity 9mo ago
    Oh that’s a flash from the past. For what it’s worth, Eclipse was a better experience for me than Netbeans.. Nowadays all my development work happens in vim and I’ve happily not opened an editor like IntelliJ or VS Code in 5+ years.
- Nystik 9mo ago
  As someone who has to use xcode from time to time to maintain a number of apps for work. It is my absolute least favourite IDE. Its such a bad experience. I prefer writing in vscode instead and only using xcode to compile and debug.
- aylmao 9mo ago
  It's a shame too, because it's always seemed like a very cool platform develop for. I developed some simple macOS apps as fun side-projects back in the early 2010s but then very much switched to web; the tools are a big reason why.
walthamstow 9mo ago
The hijacking of file associations is one of the most awful and malicious things about macOS. You can set it to whatever you want, when Apple decide they want to, your CSVs will go to Numbers, JSONs go to Xcode.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
mikenew 9mo ago
I like how Xcode installs a bunch of gigantic, multi-gigabyte artifacts for like ios runtimes or whatever, fills up the hard drive, can't update because it's out of space, and then tells me I'm not allowed to delete them because of SIP.
- MoonWalk 9mo ago
  The dozens and dozens of simulators it installs without asking... which kill your system's audio capabilities for some reason: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256140785 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256140785 But the best part is what it DOESN'T install when you think you've updated. You get on a plane and settle in for some work, only to be prompted to download and install a bunch of required crap you weren't told about. OH WELL, says Apple, your time is FREE!
verifex 9mo ago
It's interesting seeing people complain about the load times of XCode, as someone who uses VSCode and has loved the instant load times, I think the people over at MSFT have been listening a bit as the latest version of Visual Studio has finally managed to fix some of their problems with the thing taking upwards of 10-20 seconds to load. Visual Studio 2026 now loads "almost" as fast as VSCode, which is great! Now they just need to make project loading faster.
- aylmao 9mo ago
  If you told people in 2006 that 20 years later the best open-source IDE would be open-source, web-based and come from Microsoft, they would've thought you're crazy. Back then Apple had made waves introducing Safari, which was not only great and cross-platform, but had an open-source renderer (WebKit), and JavaScript engine (JSC). Safari was crushing web standards while IE lagged, seemingly trying to purposefully choke the web to stop it from canibalizing Windows software. Apple was betting on web: one of the big features on their brand-new Mac OS 10.4 Tiger was the Dashboard with widgets that were all built with HTML/CSS/JS, and they were shipping a new, free IDE (Dashcode) to build them too. Mac OS X was heavily marketed for being UNIX vs Microsoft's proprietary and closed Windows NT. They were building Safari and iTunes for Windows, and had just introduced the first Intel Macs; it seemed like they were out to put a fight against a very closed, very walled, and very incompatible Microsoft who had gotten too comfortable with the Wintel and IE monopolies. Fast-forward two decades, and not only can you now run a native GNU/Linux environment on Windows, but the best IDE out there is web-based and open-source Microsoft software while Apple lags behind on developer experience. They seems to have missed the bus on web technologies too. They went from leading charge with a stellar browser pushing web standards forward, to being an obstacle out of fear Safari might canibalize iOS software. Apple hasn't gone full early-2000s Microsoft (thankfully) and Microsoft hasn't gone full early-2000s Apple (unfortunately) but times have really changed.
willtemperley 9mo ago
Is this the time for a random Xcode rant? The topic is agentic AI in Xcode. I'd be a lot more interested in hearing what people think about this development, what it means for code privacy, how are the context windows handled, can it be enabled per-project, etc.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
bobbylarrybobby 9mo ago
For “looking at a text file with pretty print”, try CotEditor. https://coteditor.com https://coteditor.com

olivia-banks 9mo ago

I agree with you, it's infuriating. I think it's been loading faster recently (maybe?), but it still takes like 10 seconds. To set file association stuff more easily than with the Finder GUI, you can run (with https://github.com/moretension/duti https://github.com/moretension/duti): duti -s com.apple.textedit public.${whatever} all Where ${whatever} is in {plain-text, json, source-code, ...}. I'm sure there's a way to automate this through parsing `lsregister -dump`, but have a script I run on every Mac I have that sets TextEdit as the default instead of XCode for a bunch of file types :-)

DonHopkins 9mo ago

> sleep(rand()) You're being too kind. It feels like a 8 cores worth of parallel busy loops to me! I bet Alan Dye insisted they put it in there so users can pause their busy to gaze at and appreciate his artistically minimal unpainted Liquid Glass window frame.

wlesieutre 9mo ago
I like to take a few minutes to admire the content underneath/behind my sidebars

dylan604 9mo ago

I'm confused, how have you not reassociated the files with the app of your choosing? Is Xcode somehow changing associations back? Does it do it only at updates? As far as Apple providing anything, why are they the expected ones providing it? There are a gigabazillionumpteen text editors that can reformat JSON. I have Xcode, and have associated JSON with a different editor. Not once has it ever changed on me.

nerdsniper 9mo ago
There is a way to do it, but it’s not the most typical way MacOS users do it for everything else, which involves Right Click->Open With->Other->Always Open With. Xcode’s file associations are super aggressive. I believe that “Get Info”->”Open With”->”Change All…” still works, and there are command line methods or third party tools. This has driven me to madness too.
- crazygringo 9mo ago
  Not something I've ever experienced. Open As... Always works just fine.
- c-fe 9mo ago
  select in finder the file that currently opens with XCode, then press Cmd+i. It opens the information panel. There in the Open with section, you can chose the app and then also Change all to not use XCode.
- dwaite 9mo ago
  > Xcode’s file associations are super aggressive. They are the same Info.plist format as every other MacOS application.
  - nerdsniper 9mo ago
    Something is different. Right Click->Open With->Other->Always Open With 100% did not have any effect when I needed it in the past. Not sure what current behavior is. This was a huge thing for me.

aniforprez 9mo ago

There was a time I was interested in building for MacOS. Installing, opening and trying to use Xcode killed that pretty quick. I've never seen an IDE this behind in terms of usability from the competition.

reactordev 9mo ago
This is why people hate porting to Mac. Because at some point they need XCode and XCode is horrible.
someguyiguess 9mo ago
Same experience. The 2009 version of Eclipse was more stable than modern XCode. And that’s saying something.
- Insanity 9mo ago
  Oh that’s a flash from the past. For what it’s worth, Eclipse was a better experience for me than Netbeans.. Nowadays all my development work happens in vim and I’ve happily not opened an editor like IntelliJ or VS Code in 5+ years.
Nystik 9mo ago
As someone who has to use xcode from time to time to maintain a number of apps for work. It is my absolute least favourite IDE. Its such a bad experience. I prefer writing in vscode instead and only using xcode to compile and debug.
aylmao 9mo ago
It's a shame too, because it's always seemed like a very cool platform develop for. I developed some simple macOS apps as fun side-projects back in the early 2010s but then very much switched to web; the tools are a big reason why.

walthamstow 9mo ago

The hijacking of file associations is one of the most awful and malicious things about macOS. You can set it to whatever you want, when Apple decide they want to, your CSVs will go to Numbers, JSONs go to Xcode.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

mikenew 9mo ago

I like how Xcode installs a bunch of gigantic, multi-gigabyte artifacts for like ios runtimes or whatever, fills up the hard drive, can't update because it's out of space, and then tells me I'm not allowed to delete them because of SIP.

MoonWalk 9mo ago
The dozens and dozens of simulators it installs without asking... which kill your system's audio capabilities for some reason: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256140785 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256140785 But the best part is what it DOESN'T install when you think you've updated. You get on a plane and settle in for some work, only to be prompted to download and install a bunch of required crap you weren't told about. OH WELL, says Apple, your time is FREE!

verifex 9mo ago

It's interesting seeing people complain about the load times of XCode, as someone who uses VSCode and has loved the instant load times, I think the people over at MSFT have been listening a bit as the latest version of Visual Studio has finally managed to fix some of their problems with the thing taking upwards of 10-20 seconds to load. Visual Studio 2026 now loads "almost" as fast as VSCode, which is great! Now they just need to make project loading faster.

aylmao 9mo ago
If you told people in 2006 that 20 years later the best open-source IDE would be open-source, web-based and come from Microsoft, they would've thought you're crazy. Back then Apple had made waves introducing Safari, which was not only great and cross-platform, but had an open-source renderer (WebKit), and JavaScript engine (JSC). Safari was crushing web standards while IE lagged, seemingly trying to purposefully choke the web to stop it from canibalizing Windows software. Apple was betting on web: one of the big features on their brand-new Mac OS 10.4 Tiger was the Dashboard with widgets that were all built with HTML/CSS/JS, and they were shipping a new, free IDE (Dashcode) to build them too. Mac OS X was heavily marketed for being UNIX vs Microsoft's proprietary and closed Windows NT. They were building Safari and iTunes for Windows, and had just introduced the first Intel Macs; it seemed like they were out to put a fight against a very closed, very walled, and very incompatible Microsoft who had gotten too comfortable with the Wintel and IE monopolies. Fast-forward two decades, and not only can you now run a native GNU/Linux environment on Windows, but the best IDE out there is web-based and open-source Microsoft software while Apple lags behind on developer experience. They seems to have missed the bus on web technologies too. They went from leading charge with a stellar browser pushing web standards forward, to being an obstacle out of fear Safari might canibalize iOS software. Apple hasn't gone full early-2000s Microsoft (thankfully) and Microsoft hasn't gone full early-2000s Apple (unfortunately) but times have really changed.

willtemperley 9mo ago

Is this the time for a random Xcode rant? The topic is agentic AI in Xcode. I'd be a lot more interested in hearing what people think about this development, what it means for code privacy, how are the context windows handled, can it be enabled per-project, etc.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

bobbylarrybobby 9mo ago

For “looking at a text file with pretty print”, try CotEditor. https://coteditor.com https://coteditor.com