Re: Xcode release notes
Re: Xcode release notes
- Subject: Re: Xcode release notes
- From: Godfrey DiGiorgi <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 14:00:26 -0700
Rob,
I was responding to David as an individual user, not in any official
capacity as an Apple representative. My apologies if my comment
offended you. I was just pointing out that the Xcode Documentation
window allowed a great deal of access to Release Note documents, and I
felt a screen shot showed that to best advantage.
I was never "the head of developer tools" at Apple. In fact, I have not
been employed by Apple since April 2004. Beyond that, I've known David
Dunham for almost 20 years: we converse in a manner suited to business
acquaintances of long association.
David and I have shared a few additional emails on this topic. It might
be true that a few documents that are installed locally in the Xcode
1.2 installation might only be accessible via a web access in later
versions, but I do not have any later version at my disposal to work
with as yet.
Unfortunately, modern IDEs are necessarily extremely complex to offer a
wide variety of different ways to use them, which allows them to be
tailored for best efficiency on a wide variety of development tasks at
many levels of expertise. I'm sure you'll agree that documenting such
complexity effectively, simply, and thoroughly is a huge undertaking.
Great strides have been made towards that end since the Xcode IDE was
released not quite one year ago. If you haven't lately, you should
browse the Developer Connection Tools pages, starting at
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/Tools.html
for many topics on Xcode Tools usage. I also noticed today five
"Headlines" announced on the main Apple Developer page which are
targeted at Tools usage:
b* Documentation: Remote Debugging in Xcode
b* Documentation: Xcode Source Control Management
b* Documentation: Moving Projects From CodeWarrior to Xcode
b* Documentation: Xcode Build System
b* Documentation: MacB OSB X Assembler Guide
See http://developer.apple.com/ for more details.
best,
Godfrey
On Aug 4, 2004, at 12:29 PM, Rob Dye wrote:
This little exchange between a relative newcomer (?) to Xcode and the
head of developer tools at Apple (I'm not sure about that title,
Godfrey) strikes me as indicative of a systemic problem with Xcode:
the developers of Xcode do not appear to have a good understanding of
the users of Xcode.
I often find myself searching through Xcode muttering "where is that
damn checkbox/option/preference? Do I twiddle the build phase? (nope,
nothing there.) Is it in the properties of a target? Is it in the
properties of the group? Check all the menus... Christ! What do I have
to do to get what I want?"
Also, on a fairly regular basis, Xcode users post to this list with
questions that have apparently obvious answers to an Xcode expert. You
could say that is just the natural consequence of the Xcode learning
curve. However, these questions and my experience with Xcode (and
years of usage of other IDEs including VC, Project Builder,
CodeWarrior, Think C, Lightspeed C and Megamax C) lead me to believe
that that is an easy answer that masks a deeper problem: there appears
to be mental model that the Xcode developers have about Xcode that is
not shared by a large number of users.
I don't want to start any kind of flame war. Xcode is very powerful in
many ways. I just think the Xcode developers should take these kinds
of questions/irritations/complaints as something more than just stupid
users who haven't a clue. Stupid users are usually just the innocent
victims of a stupid user interface.
Rob Dye
LabVIEW R&D
National Instruments
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