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Dear Apple

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Re: Dear Apple

#141

Post by debt »

fleshweasel wrote: post #7

It's absurd to have to beg the wealthiest software company in the world for what should be considered really basic stuff. Xcode is consistently unstable, slow, missing simple essential functionality (like refactoring), and Apple's interface builder is something that most experienced Apple devs know to run for the hills from.

It boils down to budget. The app ecosystem simply isn't a high priority because it makes little to no money relative to Apple's core business. Matter of fact the best thing they did was introduce ads to app search, at least now they're probably making a few more bucks.

They invest most of their resources into hardware and critical software. Everything else clearly is secondary.

It doesnt take much to form this opinion either, just look at the quality of their software overall. Very inconsistent, trending towards mostly stable. Design improves which is good I guess but not what developers need.

They don't make a ton of money from independent developers and it doesn't matter anyway because most of the heavily used apps are created by Apple themselves.

Re: Dear Apple

#142

Post by maxxxxx »

stuckagain wrote: post #122
maxxxxx wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually picked a small number. With documentation, testing and everything you get pretty quickly to large teams. I bet less than 10 would be devs.

I was all-in with six. Three people to write the code. Two people to write the documentation and otherwise interface with the public. One person to answer all of the emails and attend all of the meetings and make sure nobody interrupts the other five people. If you have headcount for "testing" then I don't want to use your software. Tests are integral to coding and should be written first.

That would be a dream but I have never seen that I a large company. Every little thing gets huge overhead.

Re: Dear Apple

#143

Post by AsyncAwait »

saurik wrote: post #134
jmkni wrote: post #52

The best way to build native iOS applications is in Visual Studio with Xamarin IMHO. It pulls in the UI designer from XCode, and you get all of the advantages of Visual Studio which is hands-down just a better IDE than XCode.

Yeah :/... I do not understand, nor have any sympathy for, all these people who insist upon using Xcode even though we all know how bad it is... there are so many alternative toolsets you can use, including just vim+git+make, that are just so much more stable and easier to customize to get the optimal testing workflow, that to sit around and smash your head against Xcode over and over again while constantly complaini…

> I do not understand, nor have any sympathy for, all these people who insist upon using Xcode

> there are so many alternative toolsets you can use

Actually no, if you want the latest, most supported tools, frameworks APIs etc. you have to use Xcode.

Most of us don't want to use Xcode, but we also don't want to use C#, (Swift is actually very nice), which IS NOT a native solution.

Re: Dear Apple

#145

Post by dep_b »

accatyyc wrote: post #140
vrutberg wrote: post #131

As a developer who moved from Java and JavaScript (IntelliJ IDEA) to Swift and Xcode about a year ago, the experience has been horrendous. How is it okay for a company as big and serious as Apple to have an IDE and tooling as bad as Xcode? The IDE frequently crashes, there is no refactoring support at all, practically non-existant code completion, syntax highlightning frequently stops working, etc etc.

What's worse... the refactor functionality for renaming used to be great, but when swift came along it stopped working for Objective-C as well...

> the refactor functionality for renaming used to be great

Objective-C did have some basic tools. But even Eclipse was better?

You can always use AppCode, I believe it has the usual JetBrains level of refactoring. I have a copy paid and installed yet I almost never use it.

Re: Dear Apple

#146

Post by AsyncAwait »

thedjinn wrote: post #3

The one thing I'd really like to see is a more stable autocomplete. Having a decently working editor should be prioritised above everything else in my opinion.

Not only autocomplete, but syntax highlighting as well.

SourceKit seems to crash with every moderately complex expression.

Re: Dear Apple

#147

Post by wsc981 »

vrutberg wrote: post #131

As a developer who moved from Java and JavaScript (IntelliJ IDEA) to Swift and Xcode about a year ago, the experience has been horrendous. How is it okay for a company as big and serious as Apple to have an IDE and tooling as bad as Xcode? The IDE frequently crashes, there is no refactoring support at all, practically non-existant code completion, syntax highlightning frequently stops working, etc etc.

I've been using Xcode for many, many years now. In the past (~8+ years ago) I've used Visual Studio.

From my perspective Xcode is a really nice IDE. I prefer the lean UI compared to Visual Studio and Xamarin. The only thing that annoys me is that since Swift the syntax colouring and autocompletion breaks multiple times a day. This is a slight annoyance for me, but otherwise I personally think it's a decent IDE.

I don't experience the crashes like you do. And I've never really used much refactoring tools in the past, so I guess I don't know what I am missing out on.

But you might want to consider AppCode from Jetbrains. Apparently it supports both Objective-C and Swift and it's refactoring support -at least- should be good.

Re: Dear Apple

#148

Post by mayoff »

scribu wrote: post #23
Larrikin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I immediately downloaded appcode when I found I couldn't rename variables in swift

But you can rename variables in Swift 3 + XCode 8: move cursor to a symbol and press Command + Control + E. Sadly, that's the only refactoring support available right now.

Sadly, that only renames within the current file.

Re: Dear Apple

#149

Post by AsyncAwait »

camdenlock wrote: post #104

Oof. This isn't good for Apple, and I say this as a fairly big Apple fan. From my perspective as a programmer, Apple's success has hinged entirely on the quality and innovation of their OS and dev tools. For a long time, both of these have been ahead of the game (since NeXT came to Apple). They lose this advantage, they crumble. Mark my words! Go on, mark them.

They did develop Swift fairly recently, which is actually very nice, so it's not like they're doing nothing for developers, but the Xcode team really needs to pick thing up.
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