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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

#181

Post by andrekandre »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #69
allthetime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Like you, I think that Xcode maybe gets a worse rap than it deserves, but it's also endlessly frustrating. First, the performance is just bad . The responsiveness compared to apps like VSC or Panic’s Nova is night-and-day. The attention given to the design of new features is piss-poor. Placing the AI functionality on the left sidebar makes no sense; all the other tools on the left are project management; the "let me…

  > functionality on the left sidebar makes no sense
they really just need to get rid of 'sidebars' and go full-on panel oriented ui so i can put whatever inspector/tool on whatever edge of the window i want; i'm constantly switching between opening panels and closing panels and hunting and pecking for the right panel-within-a-panel with those tiny icons...

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

#182

Post by andrekandre »

gwking wrote: post #38
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.

For the record, I started using Xcode before it was called that and people have said this almost every year since. As I recall there was a big hit to its quality when they converted it to obj-c’s short lived garbage collection, and it felt like it never got back to reliable after that.

  > converted it to obj-c’s short lived garbage collection
that was around xcode 4 iirc, that was when interface builder was ducktaped (or maybe i should say intermixed) with xcode (née project builder) to disastrous results in terms of performance... its never really recovered imo...

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

#183

Post by andrekandre »

stalfosknight wrote: post #100
doug_durham wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is "AI being shoved down you throat"? Did you think that SwiftUI was shoved down your throat? Did you think that CoreData was shoved down your throat. Perhaps develop a more nuanced critique.

Copilot being added to the Xbox app on iOS is the latest ridiculous example I've seen of AI being shoved down everyone's throat.

it really is getting ridiculous; atlassian has this other totally useless ai called rovo that invents events/meetings and notes when it tries to summarize a tree of documents and offers random useless "suggestions" for jira docs...

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

#184

Post by MoonWalk »

mikenew wrote: post #177
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 like how Xcode installs a bunch of gigantic, multi-gigabyte artifacts for like ios runtimes or whatever, fills up the hard drive, can't update because it's out of space, and then tells me I'm not allowed to delete them because of SIP.

The dozens and dozens of simulators it installs without asking... which kill your system's audio capabilities for some reason: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256140785

But the best part is what it DOESN'T install when you think you've updated. You get on a plane and settle in for some work, only to be prompted to download and install a bunch of required crap you weren't told about. OH WELL, says Apple, your time is FREE!

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

#185

Post by verifex »

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…

It's interesting seeing people complain about the load times of XCode, as someone who uses VSCode and has loved the instant load times, I think the people over at MSFT have been listening a bit as the latest version of Visual Studio has finally managed to fix some of their problems with the thing taking upwards of 10-20 seconds to load. Visual Studio 2026 now loads "almost" as fast as VSCode, which is great! Now they just need to make project loading faster.

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

#186

Post by ed_mercer »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #102
markbao wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. It most certainly is not, lol. That's the hype that the parent was referring to. Most people have found AI to be a detriment, not a benefit, to their work.

Then how do you explain the massive growth of Claude Code?

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

#187

Post by doug_durham »

egorfine wrote: post #85
doug_durham wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is "AI being shoved down you throat"? Did you think that SwiftUI was shoved down your throat? Did you think that CoreData was shoved down your throat. Perhaps develop a more nuanced critique.

> In what way is "AI being shoved down you throat"? Ask Microsoft, they have much more experience with that. > Did you think that SwiftUI was shoved down your throat? On a scale of 1 to 10, it has been shoved down our throats at level 1 or maybe 2. Thankfully it's optional. > Did you think that CoreData was shoved down your throat No. > Perhaps develop a more nuanced critique. I believe most people who used Xcode per…

How are you forced to use it in Xcode? If you don't opt to use it then you don't see it.

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

#189

Post by lynndotpy »

Aloisius wrote: post #174
lynndotpy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

It shouldn't take over a second to switch desktops. I just checked with a screen recording. Switching desktops takes 15 frames (250 ms). If you turn reduce motion on, it takes 13 frames (216 ms).

The 1200ms was an estimation, but it's definitely closer to 1200ms than it is for 250ms for me. There's definitely a difference in set up here- I'm on a Macbook Pro with an M1 Pro chip.

From a screen recording, I count 53 screen-recorded frames from the apparent start of the animation (which occurs after it's invoked) to desktop widgets becoming transparent (which appears to be the point input is no longer blocked). IINA says the video is 50.582 fps (very strange frame rate?) so that would be ~1050ms.

Of course, that doesn't include any input latency or the display latency, so I also took a video with my phone. I took two trials and I recorded a full 1.08 seconds from key depression to transparent widgets. I did two more with Reduce Motion on and got the exact same time.

I am very curious what your set up is, because I am invested in getting this as close to 8.3 ms as possible.

edit: For comparison, my Linux desktop with a similar experimental set up, this takes about 24ms from key depression to the next desktop becoming visible. The only experimental difference is that I had to switch to the "slow mo" camera to record the difference, and I have a 240hz monitor. The desktop is also considered one of the slower ones (GNOME).

TLDR: It takes 1.08 seconds, on my Macbook, to complete a desktop transition.

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

#190

Post by ninkendo »

snarf21 wrote: post #119
allthetime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If nothing else, an update to the pbxproj file format would be life changing. Most of my time fighting git is dealing with project file merges.

It’s so great when the files on the navigator pane aren’t sorted, and then if you right-click sort, it rewrites half your pbxproj file and you get merge conflicts everywhere. So then nobody sorts the files because they don’t want to deal with it. Why can’t the sorting be a view thing that’s independent of the contents of the project file? Who knows.

When I used it in a team, I had to write a build step that would fail the build if the pbxproj file wasn’t sorted. (Plus a custom target that would sort it for you.) It was the only way to make sure it never got unsorted in the first place.

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