Re: Xcode - An Apple Embarrassment
Re: Xcode - An Apple Embarrassment
- Subject: Re: Xcode - An Apple Embarrassment
- From: Gwynne Raskind <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:10:33 -0500
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 17:57, Crispin Bennett <email@hidden> wrote:
> On 29/02/2012, at 5:54 AM, Jens Alfke wrote:
>> Oh, come on. You ran into some bugs, and they’re frustrating no doubt, but this is an overreaction. If you’ve been around long enough to remember MPW, you’ve certainly had to deal with many buggy releases from many different vendors. I’ve certainly heard a lot of cursing from co-workers about Visual Studio over the hears. It’s unfortunate but it happens. Especially idiosyncratic bugs that only happen to a small number of users; it sounds like Xc 4.3 is behaving worse for you than for most people. (I haven’t had any real problems with it myself.)
> While I'm aware how easy it is to get over-exercised about frustrations with dev tools, I think the problems with Xcode 4 are worse than you suggest. That's certainly the impression I get from others' comments in the twitterverse etc, though clearly that's hard to gauge, subject to lots of silliness, etc. But many really smart people have lost faith in Xcode.
>
> I was an Xcode defender early on, being initially very pleased by its design clarity and consistency. But I've found myself ground down by time wasted by crashes, interaction design problems, and implementation infelicities. That all this comes from a *released* product from the richest company in the world makes it clear to me that something is deeply wrong with the Xcode 4 project as a whole. Hopefully Apple can do the rabbit-trick and somehow turn it around, but I need tools that work smoothly, right now.
>
> For now my solution has been to surrender and use JetBrains' AppCode, which lacks surface elegance, and suffers from clutter, but is for the most part a pleasure to actually write code in.
I have to agree as well. Xcode 3 was getting pretty good for awhile,
but then Xcode 4 was released, a massive backwards step in
functionality which has only been getting worse with its point
releases. I have suffered, shockingly, very few of the crashes and
data loss bugs which people here have been plagued with, but I have
plenty of gripes just the same.
Xcode 4's integrated layout may look good on paper, and even work
better for some people, but for others it's a hopeless struggle to
manage screen space and get a consistent workflow going. Xcode 3's
ability to pop open and then close the build progress window was
delightful; with Xcode 4 I just get the build log in my editor pane
without being able to see the code I'm working on. Ditto that the IB
integration into Xcode; with a windowed layout that would have been
tolerable, but as it is I spend considerable time just going back and
forth between interface and code views to see what the heck I'm doing
- and no, tearing off Xcode 4's tabs doesn't make it better, because
that has a near-100% tendency to completely destroy my window position
and layout settings. Xcode 4 took away the class hierarchy view. It
took away the ability to compile one file at a time. The integrated
debugger console is painful and takes away from code editor screen
space. Workspaces are just plain broken and do not work as advertised.
The configuration editor is a step up, but unfortunately the "scheme"
concept is a two steps down. Switching between Debug and Release
should not require chugging through three settings panels to find the
right switch. And don't talk to me about the inability to shut off Git
integration on a per-project basis (or, for that matter, at all). Why
can't I enable Guard Malloc or change the debugger used for unit
tests? Why am I sacrificing valuable screen space (and I say that
having a 27" screen, fully aware that people are doing dev with Xcode
4 on 11" Macbook Airs) for an iTunes-like status display when Xcode
3's status bar was just as useful?
And Xcode 4 itself is, as a whole, sluggish in every respect.
Operations of all kinds, from editing text to creating connections in
IB to switching between code files, which were perceptually
instantaneous in Xcode 3 take visible time in 4. Even those 200
milliseconds here and there add up to an overall feeling that I'm
spending more time waiting for my development environment to catch up
with my thinking than I am actually writing code. Yes, it's very nice
that the debugger console and utility panels slide neatly in and out
with smooth animation, but I'm a developer; Apple doesn't have to
market eyecandy to me. I'd -strongly- prefer instant response. And all
I get for all this trouble is ridiculously bloated memory usage
forcing a restart of the program every several hours of serious work.
Before anyone asks, yes, I've filed several Radars. All have been
closed as duplicates (which means I'll never hear anything about them
again) or ignored (same result). The impression I get from Apple is
that they think that they have enough people who build their
livelihoods on the iOS ecosystem that they don't have to put any
effort into improving the tools for those who give a darn about a time
when writing code wasn't an exercise in stockpiling $20,000 for a
tripped out Mac Pro whose stats can compensate for Xcode's flaws.
-- Gwynne
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