Re: Re: Apple's Tools Strategy
Re: Re: Apple's Tools Strategy
- Subject: Re: Re: Apple's Tools Strategy
- From: "Mark Munz" <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 15:16:52 -0700
On 10/28/06, Turtle Creek Software <email@hidden> wrote:
This reminds me of tech calls we get from our own users, who sometimes
complain that something is "hard to use". Sometimes when we press them
for specifics they can tell us. But sometimes they get angry and say
something like "Hey, we just run a construction company. YOU write
software. YOU figure it out!"
And they are right. Users are not software designers.
Yes and no. You can hope that whatever you "fix" will be what they
wanted, but unless you know what it is, you're just shooting in the
dark. Now sometimes it requires a bit more conversation to better
determine what is the root of the problem.
When you use descriptions like "better", which are very subjective,
the respond could just as easily be "it is better". You have to have
an understanding of what the problem is if there is any hope of
addressing it.
In this business, sometimes one needs to listen to terribly vague
complaints, and then figure out how to fix them. Or even harder, guess
about possible problems in advance. Sometimes it's grueling but it's
part of the job description.
My experience has been that when the complaints are vague, you have to
keep digging to understand the real problem. Part of that is
understanding the workflow of the customer and how they are using your
software. You might call that guessing about possible problems, but we
called it analyzing the customer and doing use cases.
OK, in this case the complainers are users AND software designers. But
we also need to spend a lot of time trying to satisfy our own users,
and improve our own software. We can't necessarily always give a nice
roadmap about how to fix/improve XCode.
I'm not asking for a nice roadmap, but your complaints are: work more
like CW, better tools. Those offer up nothing to help folks understand
what your gripe is.
Having said that, I think a perusal of the past year's comments here
would turn up a few dozen specific complaints.
Actually there are probably hundreds of bugs logged with Apple about
the dev tools, which is the way Apple officially tracks issues. Your
particular issue may or may not be amongst those. I'm not exactly sure
how Apple prioritizes things, but we factor in how common the issue is
and who it affects.
Here's my short list, based on a very short time checking out XCode:
1. fast code coloring-- so typing of constant/class/method name gives
instant feedback (1/10 second or under)
2. fast/brainless way to get to constant/enum/macro/class/method
declaration & definition (1 sec or under)
3. fast large file opening (1 sec or under)
3. fast text scrolling, file navigation, compiling
4. import of settings, project info etc, so large CW projects will
compile with a minimum of fuss (1 week or under)
5. zero need for command-line typing, typing obscure compiler
directives, etc.
What is interesting in seeing this list is that we finally start to
understand the issue. You think Xcode is too slow (the first 4 items
listed). You are correct that Xcode is slower that CW (my belief is
that it cannot make some assumptions that CW could when building as it
is a more generic system), but it has improved with each release. Will
it improve even more with the next release? Likely.
btw.. it wasn't clear to me until now that speed was your #1
complaint. I experience some of your issues, but on a much smaller
scale as my workflow tends to keep files pretty small, so opening and
scrolling are pretty fast for me (I also try to get the beefiest
machine possible). In my experience, the intel machines seem to
compile a lot faster than the G5 machines.
#4 -- Apple does offer a project import. I'm not sure how well it
works (I chose to rewrite in Cocoa), but if you're having specific
problems, I think folks are willing to help out with that.
#5 -- yeah, I had the command line options too. I think they're
getting better at making common options with a UI and it isn't
something I'm dealing with day in and day out. My settings change a
few times in life of a release, so while it is annoying, it isn't the
end of the world.
Or in 3 words, "Follow Mac HIG".
I don't think that's a good way to summarize it because Xcode does a
decent job of adhering to the HIG where possible. Are there areas that
need help, sure -- but in most cases I don't think of them as not
following the HIG.
--
Mark Munz
unmarked software
http://www.unmarked.com/
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