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Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

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Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#131

Post by FranklinJabar »

9dev wrote: post #120
spacedcowboy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Xc…

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.

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?

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#132

Post by st3fan »

allthetime wrote: post #45
flohofwoe wrote: post #13

Building castles in the sky while the foundation is rotting away :/ Xcode really needs a couple of years of pure bugfix and optimization releases instead of hype-chasing.

Honest question. I've been using XCode for 10 years. For me, it's only improved and I don't have any real pain points. They are definitely fixing bugs. I make software for iOS, macOS, car play, and apple watch. Sure sometimes I've got to reset or clear a cache, but this has never stopped my day. What is so horrible about XCode?

It has become a meme to complain about Xcode. When I ask devs what they don't like about it it is usually very subjective or a misunderstanding. Take it all with a grain of salt. It is one of the most advanced and amazing IDEs out there IMO.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#133

Post by zamadatix »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #126
9dev wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#134

Post by isodev »

markbao wrote: post #87
flohofwoe wrote: post #13

Building castles in the sky while the foundation is rotting away :/ Xcode really needs a couple of years of pure bugfix and optimization releases instead of hype-chasing.

This is not hype-chasing. AI is a key part of software engineering now. For this to be absent from Xcode would be an existential risk for the future of the product.

> AI is a key part of software engineering now

No, it isn’t. There are irresponsible voices in the community who claim that it is, but they always find convenient ways to omit the downsides (on both the tech and effects on society as a whole).

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#135

Post by perplex »

allthetime wrote: post #45
flohofwoe wrote: post #13

Building castles in the sky while the foundation is rotting away :/ Xcode really needs a couple of years of pure bugfix and optimization releases instead of hype-chasing.

Honest question. I've been using XCode for 10 years. For me, it's only improved and I don't have any real pain points. They are definitely fixing bugs. I make software for iOS, macOS, car play, and apple watch. Sure sometimes I've got to reset or clear a cache, but this has never stopped my day. What is so horrible about XCode?

Xcode is abysmal on a large codebase. Freezes constantly on operations. The most useful features stall the entire program, things like: test navigator, quick open files, debugger, etc..

But I agree that Xcode runs fine on small projects and recent version feel stable compare to past releases.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#136

Post by rob »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #126
9dev wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#137

Post by olivia-banks »

cyrusradfar wrote: post #130

OT: Rant Xcode being loaded on my computer causes something akin to a kernel panic. Not the fun kind where you get to read a backtrace and feel something. The existential kind. Every time it hijacks a .json or .xml file association, I experience a rage that hasn't been matched since the Emacs/vi wars ... and at least those were about editors that could open in under a geological epoch. I just want to look at a text f…

I agree with you, it's infuriating. I think it's been loading faster recently (maybe?), but it still takes like 10 seconds.

To set file association stuff more easily than with the Finder GUI, you can run (with https://github.com/moretension/duti):

  duti -s com.apple.textedit public.${whatever} all
Where ${whatever} is in {plain-text, json, source-code, ...}. I'm sure there's a way to automate this through parsing `lsregister -dump`, but have a script I run on every Mac I have that sets TextEdit as the default instead of XCode for a bunch of file types :-)

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#138

Post by 9dev »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #43

Who cares about AI’s embedded in IDEs? Here’s the tooling I need * text editor with intellisense * build system * visual debugger * CLI coding agent It’s totally fine if those four things are different. In fact I actually probably prefer them to be different. Having an all-in-one IDE is a complete and total non-goal. People have historically confused the first three as needing to be a single IDE. This has always been…

Why would you ever want a debugger that isn't integrated with the code editor..? I will never not want to debug code when the current breakpoint and evaluated expressions aren't visible in the code itself.

I mean, look at debugging in IntelliJ: https://resources.jetbrains.com/help/img/idea/2025.3/hotswap...

As opposed to the terminal: https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v16980433...

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#139

Post by 9dev »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #126
9dev wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

#140

Post by DonHopkins »

cyrusradfar wrote: post #130

OT: Rant Xcode being loaded on my computer causes something akin to a kernel panic. Not the fun kind where you get to read a backtrace and feel something. The existential kind. Every time it hijacks a .json or .xml file association, I experience a rage that hasn't been matched since the Emacs/vi wars ... and at least those were about editors that could open in under a geological epoch. I just want to look at a text f…

> sleep(rand())

You're being too kind. It feels like a 8 cores worth of parallel busy loops to me!

I bet Alan Dye insisted they put it in there so users can pause their busy to gaze at and appreciate his artistically minimal unpainted Liquid Glass window frame.

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