5 ms·

What else is there to say than that xCode is a f... nightmare. Android studio is not really better though. Native app development is an evil necessity.

billynomates 8mo ago
As someone who use Eclipse and transitioned to Android Studio over the course of my career, Android Studio is actually pretty great. These days I use Cursor almost exclusively for Flutter, but Android Studio is great for building native Android apps.
- svantana 8mo ago
  Came to say the same thing about Xcode, hehe. Could it be that the best tool is the one you're used to.
- k4rli 8mo ago
  I would recommend trying out kilocode as a vscodium extension instead of Cursor. Better pricing and more model options. For me it completely replaced Cursor and couldn't be happier.
  - billynomates 7mo ago
    Thank you I will check those out!
- bjustin 8mo ago
  Having used Android Studio for work for a few years and used Xcode quite a lot for longer, I find the praise for Android Studio to be puzzling. I would give it "fine" but no way I'd say it is "good". I haven't used it enough compared to Xcode to say if one is better than the other.
marxisttemp 8mo ago
Xcode is great
isodev 8mo ago
From all the things to work on Xcode... fixing the ghost diagnostic errors, actual hot reload instead of the nightmare Previews are, tooling to help diagnose the now messy Swift 6 concurrency code, that thing where you can't open a project and one of it's dependent swift packages for editing simultaneously ... The list of actually useful things that can be added/changed in Xcode has more tokens than Claude is allowed to read at one time before grepping.
- willtemperley 8mo ago
  > you can't open a project and one of it's dependent swift packages for editing simultaneously You can. Any local packages are automatically editable in Xcode. Opening two projects referencing the same local package dependency isn't possible however.
  - isodev 8mo ago
    Editor features for editable local packages are limited, even the project inspector hides some actions and then there is the whole story of schemas, working directory (maybe you want to tweak a binary or another target in that package) etc. It’s broken and frustrating.
- timcobb 8mo ago
  Seriously lol do they have Vim mode yet
NL807 8mo ago
>Native app development is an evil necessity. I wish people did more native app development.
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
  Same, I did try to sell native app development to my current project, but some higher up had already decided on React Native at the time. And I get it, it feels like native app development is a more expensive specialism, and this particular use case is mostly the customer portal but in an app. But I retain the strong opinion that if you as a company are serious about app development, if you want a good app, you need native apps and native app developers. Especially if you want to be present outside of the confines of your app - widgets, lock screen activities, smart watches, etc all require proper native components, because they come with very tight memory constraints and just loading in React Native and its JS stuff costs you 80% of available memory budget.
  - MoonWalk 8mo ago
    Yes, the casual references to "well there are native parts 'sprinkled in'" sound like a PITA.
rjzzleep 8mo ago
When did xcode turn into this? It wasn't too bad early on IMHO
- urbandw311er 8mo ago
  Used XCode in anger from 2011-2016 to develop an iOS app with several million users and found it to be just as awful and temperamental as others here describe.
  - zelos 8mo ago
    It was head and shoulders above many of the alternatives for mobile app development back then like Carbide or Codewarrior, though.
  - Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
    For the most part it was great (IMO), and has some features I still miss in all other editors, like the automatic side-by-side toggling, using mouse gestures (on Apple's mouse) to go back / forward in history just like Safari, etc. The most friction came from merging (e.g. when files were changed or project config was changed), due to xcode's insistence on having a project file listing all files etc. The other friction was in the annual update cycle of both xcode and the apps we built. But the last time I tried xcode it was pretty bad; on paper the new UI coding approach is great, but in practice the live preview was so tempramental and crashed so often it was barely usable.
seba_dos1 8mo ago
Fortunately native mobile app development with tools like Meson, Ninja or debhelper is a breeze.

billynomates 8mo ago

As someone who use Eclipse and transitioned to Android Studio over the course of my career, Android Studio is actually pretty great. These days I use Cursor almost exclusively for Flutter, but Android Studio is great for building native Android apps.

svantana 8mo ago
Came to say the same thing about Xcode, hehe. Could it be that the best tool is the one you're used to.
k4rli 8mo ago
I would recommend trying out kilocode as a vscodium extension instead of Cursor. Better pricing and more model options. For me it completely replaced Cursor and couldn't be happier.
- billynomates 7mo ago
  Thank you I will check those out!
bjustin 8mo ago
Having used Android Studio for work for a few years and used Xcode quite a lot for longer, I find the praise for Android Studio to be puzzling. I would give it "fine" but no way I'd say it is "good". I haven't used it enough compared to Xcode to say if one is better than the other.

marxisttemp 8mo ago

Xcode is great

isodev 8mo ago

From all the things to work on Xcode... fixing the ghost diagnostic errors, actual hot reload instead of the nightmare Previews are, tooling to help diagnose the now messy Swift 6 concurrency code, that thing where you can't open a project and one of it's dependent swift packages for editing simultaneously ... The list of actually useful things that can be added/changed in Xcode has more tokens than Claude is allowed to read at one time before grepping.

willtemperley 8mo ago
> you can't open a project and one of it's dependent swift packages for editing simultaneously You can. Any local packages are automatically editable in Xcode. Opening two projects referencing the same local package dependency isn't possible however.
- isodev 8mo ago
  Editor features for editable local packages are limited, even the project inspector hides some actions and then there is the whole story of schemas, working directory (maybe you want to tweak a binary or another target in that package) etc. It’s broken and frustrating.
timcobb 8mo ago
Seriously lol do they have Vim mode yet

NL807 8mo ago

>Native app development is an evil necessity. I wish people did more native app development.

Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
Same, I did try to sell native app development to my current project, but some higher up had already decided on React Native at the time. And I get it, it feels like native app development is a more expensive specialism, and this particular use case is mostly the customer portal but in an app. But I retain the strong opinion that if you as a company are serious about app development, if you want a good app, you need native apps and native app developers. Especially if you want to be present outside of the confines of your app - widgets, lock screen activities, smart watches, etc all require proper native components, because they come with very tight memory constraints and just loading in React Native and its JS stuff costs you 80% of available memory budget.
- MoonWalk 8mo ago
  Yes, the casual references to "well there are native parts 'sprinkled in'" sound like a PITA.

rjzzleep 8mo ago

When did xcode turn into this? It wasn't too bad early on IMHO

urbandw311er 8mo ago
Used XCode in anger from 2011-2016 to develop an iOS app with several million users and found it to be just as awful and temperamental as others here describe.
- zelos 8mo ago
  It was head and shoulders above many of the alternatives for mobile app development back then like Carbide or Codewarrior, though.
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
  For the most part it was great (IMO), and has some features I still miss in all other editors, like the automatic side-by-side toggling, using mouse gestures (on Apple's mouse) to go back / forward in history just like Safari, etc. The most friction came from merging (e.g. when files were changed or project config was changed), due to xcode's insistence on having a project file listing all files etc. The other friction was in the annual update cycle of both xcode and the apps we built. But the last time I tried xcode it was pretty bad; on paper the new UI coding approach is great, but in practice the live preview was so tempramental and crashed so often it was barely usable.

seba_dos1 8mo ago

Fortunately native mobile app development with tools like Meson, Ninja or debhelper is a breeze.