Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–348 of 348 posts

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

#341

Post by andrekandre »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #227
andrekandre wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

I'd like an option to make things like inspectors into floating utility panels like used to be common in Mac apps back in the OS X 10.0-10.6 era. This would be really nice for multi-monitor setups… your editors could use the entirety of the main window while inspectors get tossed over to the laptop's built in screen or maybe onto one of those funky vertical strip external displays.

  > into floating utility panels
yes, that is another option, and ironicaly iirc project builder (xcode up to v3) and interface builder had this paradigm in use more, then in xcode v4 they just chucked everything into a single window... its like they just gave up and decided to copy visual studio (but worse)

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

#342

Post by trinix912 »

andrekandre wrote: post #341
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like an option to make things like inspectors into floating utility panels like used to be common in Mac apps back in the OS X 10.0-10.6 era. This would be really nice for multi-monitor setups… your editors could use the entirety of the main window while inspectors get tossed over to the laptop's built in screen or maybe onto one of those funky vertical strip external displays.

> into floating utility panels yes, that is another option, and ironicaly iirc project builder (xcode up to v3) and interface builder had this paradigm in use more, then in xcode v4 they just chucked everything into a single window... its like they just gave up and decided to copy visual studio (but worse)

The Xcode interface up to v3 was an even bigger mess. Interface Builder and Xcode were two separate programs, you'd quickly fill your screen with 15 little windows that you had to constantly drag around, open, close, switch between... The IB didn't even have a canvas so you'd have all your screens inside a NIB just floating around the code windows, the inspector panels, the controls toolbox... Want to switch to this or that IB screen? Move all other windows out of the way, then bring the inspector and toolbox back, and so on. Nowadays you just Cmd-Shift-] a few times.

Putting it all into a single window was a good idea IMO, they should just make it more flexible - allow sidebars/panels to be reorganized and windows to be dragged out of the main window.

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

#343

Post by trinix912 »

aylmao wrote: post #262
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This means you've learned to work around its shortcomings. All software of comparable size and complexity have shortcomings that everyone learns to work around. And a great many of those shortcomings are actually just highly subjective personal preferences. More than half of the complaints in this thread are, to me, a terrible idea.

> All software of comparable size and complexity have shortcomings that everyone learns to work around. This is part of the issue IMO. Is this size and complexity warranted? Rust for example; its a complex language, can target pretty much all platforms under the sun, and yet it's configured with just text files, builds with just terminal commands, and works great with any text editor. I've seen people in big tech wor…

The big part of Xcode is the integrated Interface Builder. With SwiftUI it might slowly become irrelevant, but as of now, there's still no replacement for Xcode's Interface Builder. JetBrains' AppCode is/was a decent replacement for the code editor, but you still had to switch to Xcode for the UI parts.

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

#344

Post by saagarjha »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #310
saagarjha wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: symbol files are copied from a device.

Thanks for the correction. Still have no idea what it actually means, or why it takes so crazy long. If they have to update symbols upon every OS version bump, are they cleaning out the old ones? It's so frustratingly opaque.

On iOS system libraries (e.g. UIKit, CoreFoundation) are packed into a file called the dyld shared cache. To get symbols for them, you need to download this file, split it apart, and parse the symbol tables embedded inside. These symbols change with every iOS release, so it needs to be done every time you update. When you see this message in Xcode, it's downloading the shared cache file off your device (which is several gigabytes) and splitting it. This does not get cleaned up unless you do so explicitly (which is why a lot of "dev cleaner" apps will prune it for you). You can also see the symbols you have cached on your computer from System Settings.

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

#346

Post by zombot »

vaxman wrote: post #318
zombot wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plug in whatever agent you want Noob question: Does that include local models?

Only theoretically at this point, though they will tend to speak confidently enough about such untested capabilities so as to cause millions in investment losses to others. One would think a hardware manufacturer that's teetering on the abyss would go full out and implement a vLLM interface (maybe a folder of local models that can be downloaded as components in the Xcode-way and also a router too), but their NIH ment…

More noob question: What's a Graydey?

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

#347

Post by vaxman »

vaxman wrote: post #318
zombot wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plug in whatever agent you want Noob question: Does that include local models?

Only theoretically at this point, though they will tend to speak confidently enough about such untested capabilities so as to cause millions in investment losses to others. One would think a hardware manufacturer that's teetering on the abyss would go full out and implement a vLLM interface (maybe a folder of local models that can be downloaded as components in the Xcode-way and also a router too), but their NIH ment…

*-Gradey

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

#348

Post by billynomates »

k4rli wrote: post #274
billynomates wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who use Eclipse and transitioned to Android Studio over the course of my career, Android Studio is actually pretty great. These days I use Cursor almost exclusively for Flutter, but Android Studio is great for building native Android apps.

I would recommend trying out kilocode as a vscodium extension instead of Cursor. Better pricing and more model options. For me it completely replaced Cursor and couldn't be happier.

Thank you I will check those out!
Post reply on HN