Re: XCode usable?
Re: XCode usable?
- Subject: Re: XCode usable?
- From: René van Amerongen <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 15:07:14 +0100
Hardworking Apple Folks
I read about this and that is already fixed for the next release,
Please give it us today, even now.
With so many issues right now, I ( we) will be pleased when I can
dowload something with less Issues, Even one by one. Please send us
every week a update, don't let us wait to long. If you did fix
something please send it to us. I don't mind for even a daily update.
Every crash or issue less saves me money, time and gives me more time
for my wife ;-P :-)
My two cents feeling.
Reni
Op 6-nov-03 om 5:16 heeft Steve Roy het volgende geschreven:
Godfrey DiGiorgi <email@hidden> wrote:
What is significant from a UI design
standpoint is how it affects your workflow and productivity, how it
either enables or constrains your ability get work done, to learn how
to use the IDE effectively. Apple is open to constructive commentary
and feedback on this topic.
I've worked with IDEs that were single window centered and multiple
window centered, and had instances with both design centers that were
both good and bad. Striking a balance that works for all types of
activities and all kinds of people is hard work, and is what our
development team is looking to achieve in the long run.
Godfrey,
Those two quotes above are killing me, in the sense that we went
through
all this already with Project Builder. I understand your desire to want
feedback from your users, I'm no different with my own users. However,
I
feel that we already did all this with Project Builder. We already had
long debates over what UI metaphor is best, what workflow people use,
and how the product can adapt to the majority. I already invested time
and effort into providing feedback and insight for the betterment of
PB.
It was an effort at times to use PB or to train myself to use it, but
it
seemed worth it, because PB was improving. It seemed like it was going
in a direction that was serving my needs, and at the end of the day, I
liked using PB, despite its remaining issues.
On the PB list, the UI was seldom discussed now. With the advent of the
customizable UI in 2.0, everyone was happy. One could have a single
window, or 10s of them, and everything in between, and that was a great
quality of PB of being customizable without allowing too much
adaptation
either. The balance was just right, and now we're throwing it all away.
What a waste of energy and time from everyone, the Apple guys as well
as
the developers who helped shape this product.
It's not UI changes but features that were missing in PB 2.1, and
that's
what developers were asking for on the PB list. Xcode gives us the new
features, and everybody here is very happy about that. But the
questioning and objections expressed on the Xcode list are all about
the
UI. It seems that if the UI had stayed the same as in PB, nobody would
have had any complaints at all about Xcode. And of course we would all
have been able to concentrate on bug reporting and tweaking of the new
features to make them great. Instead of that, your team has to spend
countless hours responding to people, pondering the UI, evaluating
developer needs, tweaking UI code. Personally, I would much prefer that
the excellent Apple engineers spend their time debugging the new
functionality in Xcode as opposed to fiddle with the UI, when as I said
before, it's a redundant situation because they already had to do this
with PB.
I depend on PB to make a living, because I had made the choice to make
it my IDE of choice. Now in order to move to Panther, I have no
transition path and I'm forced to use a new IDE that has arguably
important bugs in it. If build settings are not picked up and I have to
spend time figuring out why, or worse if I don't notice it before it's
too late, that impacts me a great deal. If I try to convert a Java
target to native and can't get it to work, that impacts me. If I worry
that something will become corrupted, even if those cases seem
isolated,
that impacts me. As a developer who depends on those tools, not having
a
transition path affects my bottom line. It's like GM or Toyota coming
up
with an hydrogen-fueled vehicule (they give me the new features I
want),
but I have to go back to driving school to use it because they changed
how driving a car is done (they changed the UI).
All in all, I really wish the new features would have evolved on top of
PB instead of branching out dramatically like this. It appears that a
lot of Xcode functionality is actually PB with a new name, because the
old build system is still supported by Xcode, and the old everything is
still there, except the UI.
There are things in PB that developers had been complaining about
forever, but they're still there in Xcode and that blows my mind.
Things
like the indexing system, which reindexes the whole universe everytime
you create a new project. Things like large Java builds taking forever
to start actually compiling while AppendToJavaFileList does its thing.
Or things like being incapable of compiling individual source files. I
wish those important problems had received development time instead of
things like the UI that were not a problem. Yes, the new native build
system is the foundation that will help solve some of these problems,
but if the UI had not been redone, then maybe we would have fewer bugs
now in our new features, maybe they would work in Java, and maybe I
wouldn't be sitting here wondering when I will be able to install
Panther on all my machines.
All this is criticism and I concede it. But in work as in life, I find
it important to express your satisfactions as well as your
dissapointments while trying to do it in a way that is not arroguant
nor
condescending, so at least everyone knows where you stand and your
cards
are on the table. I hope I succeeded in doing that. It's not always
pleasant to be on the receiving end, and I have had my own share of
that. I'm expressing this criticism because what I have been given
affects me, my products and my customers. I hope for the best.
Steve
--
Steve Roy <email@hidden>
Personal homepage: <http://homepage.mac.com/sroy>
Projects homepage: <http://www.roydesign.net>
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