Comment by ASalazarMX

Comment by ASalazarMX 7 hours ago

27 replies

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> I've been using XCode for 10 years. For me, it's only improved and I don't have any real pain points.

This means you've learned to work around its shortcomings. A decade ago I used to develop in PyCharm for websites, and Visual Studio .Net for desktop apps. Then I had to learn XCode for a mobile app.

It was a surreal experience, like going back ten years in UX, while at the same time dealing with a myriad of modern but artificial limitations and breaking changes that meant the app needed frequent housekeeping even when its features remained unchanged.

For a company that gets a huge part of its revenue on its oversized App Store tax, developers, and their tooling, should be one of their highest priorities IMO. Instead, we get Kafkaesque situations like "my app doesn't compile today... oh, I need to open my Apple Developer account in the browser and accept a new little change in their kilometric EULA that I always pretend I've read carefully". Things like this could be handled better.

Edit: I also had to learn Android Studio for another app, and the experience had less friction overall, but that could mean that I've also learned to work around the shortcomings of JetBrains IDEs. Google is undeniably more developer-friendly than Apple IMO, though.

spacedcowboy 7 hours ago

Honestly, that just sounds like it does things in an unfamiliar (to you) way. That's the flip side of the coin "This means you've learned to work around its shortcomings".

There is no perfect IDE. They all have problems / are inadequate / get in the way. I absolutely loathe IntelliJ IDEA for example, and think Eclipse is needlessly complex (though I'd like their code-indentation/formatting UI to replace the one in Xcode).

Honestly, Xcode gets a lot of bad comments, but it works pretty well for me and the debugging tools are pretty much top-notch if you take the time to learn them.

I started a project on January 5th. Running sloc right now I see:

---------- Result ------------

            Physical :  44454
              Source :  31019
             Comment :  7284
 Single-line comment :  2622
       Block comment :  4662
               Mixed :  210
 Empty block comment :  2
               Empty :  6363
               To Do :  0
Number of files read : 195

----------------------------

That's a lot of code in just under a month (and none of it from AI tools), I don't think the IDE is getting in my way.

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  • 9dev 6 hours ago

    First time I tried it, I realised there is no way to have a terminal emulator panel. A bloody terminal. Like the most basic feature you could integrate into an IDE. No thank you.

    Reply View 25 replies
    • spacedcowboy 6 hours ago

      I'm sitting here struggling to think of why the hell you need a terminal emulator in an IDE. There's a perfectly good terminal emulator called Terminal.app, it's usually the first thing I put on my dock after a fresh install of MacOS. I like the terminal, but ... in an IDE ? I always wondered why Eclipse had one as well - it just seems like a wasted pane ?

      Perhaps it's just the setup you (the generic "you") are used to or something. I've got 3 4k screens connected to a Mac Studio here, and plenty of space for a terminal or four to be running on-screen at the same time and in windows that don't obscure the things I want to look at. I guess if you code on an MBP and space is limited, it might be easier to switch to ? But I generally want that space for my debugger and console-app i/o. I think it'd just get in the way...

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      • kalleboo an hour ago

        > I'm sitting here struggling to think of why the hell you need a terminal emulator in an IDE

        I assumed it came from Windows users who have a habit of running everything in full-screen.

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      • rob 6 hours ago

        I use the built-in terminal "panel" inside VS Code/Cursor all the time. It's next to some other useful tab panels. Great for when you need to run commands for the current project but still want to chat in the sidebar or edit something else while it runs.

        Sometimes I'll use Ghostty at the same time and switch between the two. Just depends on what I'm trying to do at the moment.

        Nothing wrong with maintaining all the context you need in a single window instead of alt+tabbing to different apps, especially for those not engulfed by three 4K displays.

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      • 9dev 5 hours ago

        Because I like to get project-aware completions, or run pre-configured tools from the IDE in an actual shell, for example.

        Also, when working on multiple projects, it’s much easier to have shells attached to a specific project that I can toggle with a keyboard shortcut to get process output or Claude right next to the code I’m looking at.

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      • lynndotpy 4 hours ago

        I come from Linux land so I'm used to things being lightning fast, so using software on a Mac requires a thousand workarounds. A terminal integrated into the IDE is one of those necessary workarounds.

        MacOS has very very slow slow window- and desktop- switching (over one FULL second to switch from one desktop to another - this is not a joke!) so having a terminal integrated into the same application is very useful for maintaining flow for users developing on a single-screen Macbook.

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      • socalgal2 3 hours ago

        I used to use terminal windows separate from my editor. Now I use VSCode, I have 6 different but related projects open. In VSCode this means 6 windows, each with multiple tabs etc. In each of those are 1 to 3 terminal editor windows. That means when I switch to that project, shells related to that project come with it. No having to hunt through 6 to 18 terminal windows to find the correct one(s)

        Turns out, for me, the terminal emulator embedded in the IDE has been a big plus.

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      • gedbnfnc 2 hours ago

        This is a standard feature in every IDE that’s ever been invented. It’s not useful for every workflow, but there’s lots of times that you’re doing something where the console or the debugger is not available or isn’t convenient and being able to have a terminal right there is so useful. If it doesn’t make sense for your workflow, then don’t bring it up, but given how many developers expect us as table stakes it’s a deeply baffling omission.

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      • zamadatix 6 hours ago

        I'll use both depending. Things which benefit from staying in the window context in the IDE window I use the IDE one, things which don't as much or are only tangentially related in an iTerm2/Terminal/Foot window (depending on the platform I'm on).

        I expect others do things differently for different reasons as much as much as I expect an IDE to support more than one type of user.

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      • timtimmy 6 hours ago

        Even with IDEs that have a terminal view, I still much prefer using a separate terminal app.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • zen928 16 minutes ago

          Why? It seems pretty pointless to keep hot memory of the context of every app and tab you have open as to recall what process and tab and window ties to what thing you were doing at what time, when it's effectively all one related workflow inside your Integrated* Development Environment. Do you just keep a separate dedicated tab in your terminal for actions you would only do against a single directory?

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      • DonHopkins 5 hours ago

        Ha ha! You sound like a vi users asking an emacs user why the hell you need a shell window in emacs!

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    • FranklinJabar 6 hours ago

      Oh you're why they add that. I just use a dedicated app. What's the benefit of putting it in the same window as the editor?

      Reply View 1 reply
      • 9dev 5 hours ago

        Replied on a sibling too, but:

        > Because I like to get project-aware completions, or run pre-configured tools from the IDE in an actual shell, for example. > Also, when working on multiple projects, it’s much easier to have shells attached to a specific project that I can toggle with a keyboard shortcut to get process output or Claude right next to the code I’m looking at.

        Window switching is bad enough on MacOS, especially if you have multiple projects open at the same time.

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    • Wowfunhappy 2 hours ago

      ...were built-in Terminal emulators even particularly common before VS Code? I remember that being a major feature of VS Code early on.

      Reply View 0 replies