6 ms·

Touching xcode to avoid touching Android is like touching concentrated hydrochloric acid to avoid breathing a fart

cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
I think IDE preference leans further towards subjective than many believe. I find that IntelliJ IDEs are fine, but not nearly as amazing as they're often hyped up to be, and similarly while Xcode has problems it's not nearly as bad as is often claimed. My experience is somewhat colored by Android Studio and JVM ecosystem stuff like gradle and proguard though, which have been more cumulative pain for me than anything Apple-side in a long time (Cocoapods was pretty gnarly but SwiftPM has fixed that).
- bigyabai 9mo ago
  There's definitely room for subjectivity, but my hard drive space is finite. And XCode takes up more room than all of my Jetbrains software combined.
  - ezfe 9mo ago
    Xcode download is only a couple GBs
    - bhawker 9mo ago
      12-20 GB, and only that if you don't want to run software on any iOS simulator.
      - dagmx 9mo ago
        You’re counting the development SDK against the IDE. Xcode itself doesn’t require that space, and you’d need that space regardless of IDE choice if you were targeting the platform.
      - jshier 9mo ago
        Xcode 26.2 is a 2.1GB download, which expands to 8.63GB on disk, which includes the macOS SDK. The iOS SDK and simulators are another 8.38GB. Luckily Xcode versions can share iOS SDKs now, so you only need to install them once. Really the biggest disk eater is Xcode's default behavior of creating a huge set of simulators for every platform.
        bigyabai 9mo ago
        At 8.6gb of disk usage, they could include the entire macOS Mojave ISO disk image[0] and still have ~930 MB to include fit the IDE. It's just unprecedented. [0] https://archive.org/details/mac-osx-mojave-iso https://archive.org/details/mac-osx-mojave-iso
      - realusername 9mo ago
        Indeed, and unless that changed since, the Mac downloader isn't even capable of resuming downloads properly so if anything happens while you download these 13GB, it's back to square one.
        BrandonSmith 9mo ago
        For years, my team uses the third-party tool `xcodes`... `brew install xcodes` or use the [GUI](https://www.xcodes.app/ https://www.xcodes.app/). It allows you to easily install and maintain several versions of Xcode (beta / RC versions). And, more importantly, uses aria2 for HTTP download, which has resumability.
        bigyabai 9mo ago
        Now this is the stuff that Apple should be Sherlocking, but doesn't.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        ezfe 9mo ago
        The comment is wrong, the download is ~2 GB
sweetjuly 9mo ago
The linked article states that you'd use VSCode, so no touching Xcode.
saagarjha 9mo ago
Xcode, for all its faults, is largely pleasant to use. This is not true of Android Studio, which looks and works as a Java IDE (derogatory).
- realusername 9mo ago
  You can't be serious, Xcode is the worse IDE I ever used, while Android Studio isn't great, it cannot be compared to that. Xcode is so sluggish it's slower than an electron app despite being native, the xcode app upload is so broken even Apple released a third party tool to bypass their own IDE and its undocumented config files look like from the 90s and do not work well with git. The UI is sort of okay but that's not going to cut it. You can feel the decades of cruft in this IDE, it feel like using Borland.
  - andrekandre 9mo ago
    > Xcode is the worse IDE I ever used let me introduce you to eclipse...
    - saagarjha 9mo ago
      Eclipse is also better than IntelliJ if we’re rounding out the unpopular IDE opinions
      - andrekandre 8mo ago
        what makes intellij so bad? (personally i thought it was better than eclipse but idk)
        saagarjha 8mo ago
        I felt it was just very weird, kind of how I feel about Visual Studio Code versus other text editors. It was faster and probably had more features but I just felt like Eclipse was more pleasant in terms of UI (though understandably a little dated looking) and it was easier to customize it to something close to perfect for me.
wiseowise 9mo ago
Have you even opened the link? It uses VS Code.

I think IDE preference leans further towards subjective than many believe. I find that IntelliJ IDEs are fine, but not nearly as amazing as they're often hyped up to be, and similarly while Xcode has problems it's not nearly as bad as is often claimed. My experience is somewhat colored by Android Studio and JVM ecosystem stuff like gradle and proguard though, which have been more cumulative pain for me than anything Apple-side in a long time (Cocoapods was pretty gnarly but SwiftPM has fixed that).

bigyabai 9mo ago
There's definitely room for subjectivity, but my hard drive space is finite. And XCode takes up more room than all of my Jetbrains software combined.
- ezfe 9mo ago
  Xcode download is only a couple GBs
  - bhawker 9mo ago
    12-20 GB, and only that if you don't want to run software on any iOS simulator.
    - dagmx 9mo ago
      You’re counting the development SDK against the IDE. Xcode itself doesn’t require that space, and you’d need that space regardless of IDE choice if you were targeting the platform.
    - jshier 9mo ago
      Xcode 26.2 is a 2.1GB download, which expands to 8.63GB on disk, which includes the macOS SDK. The iOS SDK and simulators are another 8.38GB. Luckily Xcode versions can share iOS SDKs now, so you only need to install them once. Really the biggest disk eater is Xcode's default behavior of creating a huge set of simulators for every platform.
      - bigyabai 9mo ago
        At 8.6gb of disk usage, they could include the entire macOS Mojave ISO disk image[0] and still have ~930 MB to include fit the IDE. It's just unprecedented. [0] https://archive.org/details/mac-osx-mojave-iso https://archive.org/details/mac-osx-mojave-iso
    - realusername 9mo ago
      Indeed, and unless that changed since, the Mac downloader isn't even capable of resuming downloads properly so if anything happens while you download these 13GB, it's back to square one.
      - BrandonSmith 9mo ago
        For years, my team uses the third-party tool `xcodes`... `brew install xcodes` or use the [GUI](https://www.xcodes.app/ https://www.xcodes.app/). It allows you to easily install and maintain several versions of Xcode (beta / RC versions). And, more importantly, uses aria2 for HTTP download, which has resumability.
        bigyabai 9mo ago
        Now this is the stuff that Apple should be Sherlocking, but doesn't.
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - ezfe 9mo ago
        The comment is wrong, the download is ~2 GB

sweetjuly 9mo ago

The linked article states that you'd use VSCode, so no touching Xcode.

saagarjha 9mo ago

Xcode, for all its faults, is largely pleasant to use. This is not true of Android Studio, which looks and works as a Java IDE (derogatory).

realusername 9mo ago
You can't be serious, Xcode is the worse IDE I ever used, while Android Studio isn't great, it cannot be compared to that. Xcode is so sluggish it's slower than an electron app despite being native, the xcode app upload is so broken even Apple released a third party tool to bypass their own IDE and its undocumented config files look like from the 90s and do not work well with git. The UI is sort of okay but that's not going to cut it. You can feel the decades of cruft in this IDE, it feel like using Borland.
- andrekandre 9mo ago
  > Xcode is the worse IDE I ever used let me introduce you to eclipse...
  - saagarjha 9mo ago
    Eclipse is also better than IntelliJ if we’re rounding out the unpopular IDE opinions
    - andrekandre 8mo ago
      what makes intellij so bad? (personally i thought it was better than eclipse but idk)
      - saagarjha 8mo ago
        I felt it was just very weird, kind of how I feel about Visual Studio Code versus other text editors. It was faster and probably had more features but I just felt like Eclipse was more pleasant in terms of UI (though understandably a little dated looking) and it was easier to customize it to something close to perfect for me.

wiseowise 9mo ago

Have you even opened the link? It uses VS Code.