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JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

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Re: JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

#41

Post by frou_dh »

chc wrote: post #39
frou_dh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To not see a problem with this not being Cocoa is to miss what's good about Mac OS X in comparison to Linux and other unixes. --- My dictionary says this for perverse: - Showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable, often in spite of the consequences. - Contrary to the accepted or expected standard or practice.

I do see the problem with it not being Cocoa. The thing is, I also see a problem with throwing out huge swaths of your existing, mature codebase to make a minor project superficially nicer. They're both real problems, and which matters more to you depends on how strongly you adhere to the philosophy that "real artists ship." When the iPhone came out, it didn't have cut and paste or any third-party apps. When OS X cam…

I agree that this makes business sense for JetBrains.

AppCode is clearly never going to be iterated in to a good Mac app without a rewrite.

Re: JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

#43

Post by 0xcode »

I find it interesting that so many folks whine about how an application looks instead of how much it helps you do your job. AppCode doesn't tout itself as a beautiful Mac application. It's written by developers for developers. We have a saying at my office: 'If you can't code, it's likely that you care about pixel perfection.' I care about getting stuff done. I don't care about how pretty my application is when I'm getting the job done. I like things that increase my velocity (in my case over 50%). I feel like Xcode just gets in the way many times. Simple things like not being able to have the cursor in the middle of a line and be able to simply add a line under the current line (vi lovers: think 'o' from the middle of a line). In Xcode you have to go to the end of the line and hit enter. That is one trivial example of a time saver that AppCode offers. (There are MANY).

Instead of whining about pixel perfection, try taking a look at the things it does and the audience it targets. You probably don't code enough to actually have an opinion that matters much anyway.

Re: JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

#44

Post by Zev »

ageektrapped wrote: post #40
cwbrandsma wrote: post #23

I'm a longtime Jetbrains fan (ReSharper and TeamCity). I looked into AppCode a bit earlier when it was still rough. Getting tight integration is the key for me. Refactorings would be nice (XCode has Rename already), but really what I want are snippets, or something to take some of the drudge code away. For instance, to add a property I have to add 4 lines of code in 4 different places. This should be one action (whic…

Also, automatically add the #import statement when I allocated one of my classes, please. The ideal, for me, would be the same as ReSharper: a plugin that adds functionality, but that won't happen with Xcode any time soon.

What happens if you delete the last class that #imported something? Do you remove the #import? What if the #import wasn't automatically added? Still automatically remove it?

How about if you don't need the #import for a class, but, instead for something else (say, it #imports a bunch of other classes for you instead, like UIKit.h)?

Re: JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

#45

Post by msbarnett »

chc wrote: post #35
rgbrgb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing, the standard UI elements everyone expects from a top tier Mac app and which this sadly does not deliver.

That would be nice, but I'm not sure it's worth pushing 1.0 back a year or so, all other things being equal. I certainly wouldn't call trading a bit of prettiness for a lot of functionality "perverse."

If you mistake the call for Cocoafication for nothing more than a call for "prettiness", you're naturally going to end up missing why people care so much about it.

Java applications don't support a lot of deeper OS X features that make the platform so consistent. I have custom keybindings set up via the DefaultKeyBinding.dict mechanism that work pervasively throughout the OS, except in applications like AppCode that seem to think that their ease of coding trumps my consistency of platform and configuration. I think that kind of assumption is utterly broken and user-hostile, and it has nothing at all to do with "prettiness".

Re: JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

#46

Post by msbarnett »

yawn wrote: post #26
SeoxyS wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you have to realize is that refactoring is a dangerous concept in Objective-C, regardless of which IDE you use, because of Objective-C dynamic nature. Classes can be loaded or switched at runtime, non-existant methods can be called, and class and methods can be variables. Cleanly refactoring is much easier to achieve in a statically-typed language such as Java, which is why Java IDEs are so much better at automa…

This doesn't really ring true to my ears. I have some experience with Smalltalk, which is where refactorings were pioneered, and which Objective-C has some roots in. Smalltalk is even more "dynamic" than Objective-C. If you get the chance, I recommend playing around with Squeak or Pharo.

It's not (just) the dynamism of Objective-C that make some refactorings unable to be guaranteed to produce correct results; the "C" part plays a big role as well.

Re: JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

#47

Post by MatthewPhillips »

Griever wrote: post #24

I really, really love Jetbrains. Even though I'm not an iOS developer, it's still nice to see that they are working to add their own flavor to the mix with other languages. I wish so much that they would create a Visual Studio replacement. I'm primarily a Ruby/PHP developer and use their PhpStorm and RubyMine products constantly, but whenever I am stuck doing something in .net and have to open up Visual Studio, I jus…

VS just tries to do too much. Integrating TFS is a bad idea, that should be a separate application entirely (or possible 2 separate applications). VS nails the core functionality it has provided since VS2003; code completion, refactoring, debugging. Too bad the featuritis means we have to deal with weird bugs like random freezes that require to close all the way out and restart. You can always just use the text editor of your choice and msbuild though.

Re: JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

#48

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

pat2man wrote: post #8
aespinoza wrote: post #6

I love JetBrains products. These guys are awesome. I don't write Apple Code (iOS or Mac OS), but I'm sure it is really cool. They built my favorite Java IDE, IntelliJ.

This will probably be a great project for people who are used to JetBrains products. If you are developing iOS applications on the side you won't have to learn a whole new environment. For 100% iOS development I doubt many people will switch. The integration between Xcode, Interface Builder and the various Apple frameworks is something that will be hard if not impossible to implement in another IDE.

I tried really hard to get used to it when AppCode was still in beta. But the lack of integration made it too hard. I miss my Vi plugin though.

Re: JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

#49

Post by LearnYouALisp »

Griever wrote: post #24

I really, really love Jetbrains. Even though I'm not an iOS developer, it's still nice to see that they are working to add their own flavor to the mix with other languages. I wish so much that they would create a Visual Studio replacement. I'm primarily a Ruby/PHP developer and use their PhpStorm and RubyMine products constantly, but whenever I am stuck doing something in .net and have to open up Visual Studio, I jus…

How I wish they would hire some experienced Lisp people and make a dream IDE.

Re: JetBrains AppCode: an Objective-C IDE That Makes a Difference

#50

Post by eropple »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #18
thoradam wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic: How would you compare Eclipse to IntelliJ IDEA and why did you choose Eclipse?

I've used both. I have a personally bought copy of IntelliJ, though I'm using Eclipse now. For the most part, they're both comparable. Both have powerful refactoring and code-generation abilities. For core Java development, there's no need to leave Eclipse. IntelliJ might provide some nice features, but overall it doesn't warrant purchasing a license. When combined with web development, other languages, or non-core d…

IntelliJ is also a lot nicer for Scala than the Eclipse plugins. The Python plugin is pretty excellent too; it brings in most (all?) of what you'd buy PyCharm for.
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