The only reason XCode usage is so high is that there is nothing else we can use to develop software for the Mac/iOS platform, if there were a modern day CodeWarrior then Apple would have to buy them again because no one would be using XCode.
There’s at least one other full featured IDE for Mac/iOS development, AppCode. I tried it out and IMHO the UI is pretty bad (it’s based on JetBrains’ cross-platform IDE code, and has the usual usability problems of cross-platform UIs.) It had some features lacking in Xcode, but I couldn’t stand to use it for more than five minutes.
It’s also possible to do development in editors like TextMate and SublimeText, using extension modules that invoke xcodebuild for compilation. (I think that module comes standard with TextMate.)
Development on Macs (primarily for iOS) is such a big business these days that if it were a slam-dunk to build something better than Xcode, companies would be doing it and taking over the market, like CodeWarrior did 20 years ago when the competition was MPW and Symantec C++. (I was there. I started Mac development with THINK Pascal in 1987.)
Xcode has a certain UX design that’s based on a single window, like most other current Mac apps. I know this is a problem for some people, and those people have been yelling about it ever since 10.0, and Apple has added some multi-window support, but it’s not going to get much better. If this is really a terrible problem for you, go check out those other editors/IDEs.
—Jens |