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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

#291

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.

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

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.

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

#292

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?

As others have said, I suspect you've just grown accustomed to its quirks and defects and learned to work around them. For example... * always refresh X before doing Y. * if you see this signing error, clear this cache. * don't try to drag this file here because it gets linked in the wrong way ...and so on.

If you were able to use a magical, fast, bug-fixed, version where everything 'just worked' at pace, I imagine you would begin to realise just how much you have been putting up with!

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

#293

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?

> 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…

> Google is undeniably more developer-friendly than Apple IMO, though

Yeah, I love editing XML files to build my app

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

#294
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you give specific examples ? About the only thing I use the terminal for in Xcode is "git" - and even then these days I tend to use Fork.app for that. Debugging is integrated, profiling is integrated, script-running as part of the build is integrated. Application output is integrated. What do you actually use it for ? Genuine question. I guess the AI tools might be something - I don't know about that, I don't use…

I work a lot with frameworks or languages that bring their own script runner or CLI companion to execute various tasks during development; quality checks or formatters, auxiliary tools like the Stripe webhook proxy, or interactive ones like a psql session into the database or a docker compose log stream; some of them longer-running, others single-shot executables.

Depending on what I'm doing, I need these processes either run alongside the project while I'm working on it (like watching source files), execute them automatically when something happens (like setting up a Stripe webhook proxy when I start the debug build), start them with environment configuration from the IDE (for example a database console), or really just have them close to the code (like a linter).

IntelliJ has a task runner built-in that can do all of this very easily, in a way that I can share it with the rest of my team, and don't have to bother with remembering specific commands.

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

#295
post #283

(Context: I was an iOS dev for 10 years on well known, large iOS apps - I can't explain how much I dislike Xcode). I recently started working for a startup, and they wanted an app. What I shipped was a react native app (so I don't need to go in to Xcode to build), that renders a full screen web browser that points to our website. I've sprinkled in bits of injected JS to capture our cookies and local/session storage -…

> (Context: I was an iOS dev for 10 years on well known, large iOS apps - I can't explain how much I dislike Xcode).

Since you’re pretty new to mobile dev, count yourself lucky with the amazing dev tools you have today. Nothing like doing a bit of J2ME, Symbian S60 or BlackBerry development to learn to appreciate how far we’ve come.

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

#296
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that so many people are discussing their terminal just confirms the fact that a terminal is incredibly basic.

No. It. Doesn't. The whole conversation came from someone claiming the most basic feature of an IDE is to include a terminal - that's why people are discussing terminals. Don't get me wrong, I live in the terminal when using the computer, but I don't see a need for one when using Xcode.

Call it a task runner shell, if you like. What makes a development environment integrated, if not the ability to launch and manage external processes?

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

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

It was head and shoulders above many of the alternatives for mobile app development back then like Carbide or Codewarrior, though.

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

#298
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is this bait? I don't think it's a serious question or the person is very young. To answer the question. Xcode is the default IDE for iOS development. The default option will always be a practical choice. JetBrains or Anthropic could get bought by a larger company or dismantled by the government somehow. Should anything happen to Apple (unlikely as that may seem) the entire iOS ecosystem would be gone as well negati…

Some influential iOS devs such as @dimillian and @steipete have moved away from Xcode or even xcodebuild where possible.

Which is completely fine. However these are people with lots of experience in Xcode already. People can have preferences including default options.

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

#299
post #280

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.

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…

Seriously lol do they have Vim mode yet
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