Put some lipstick on the pig

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:11:59 +0100

Mike Ash is voicing his opinion about the state of Mac development tools, in particular the de facto standard, Xcode:

Xcode sucks. If you're reading this blog then this is probably like saying "the sky is blue". You know already. Big surprise. The debugger fails all over the place, autocomplete is broken more often than it works, and the editor won't perform acceptably until you throw four Xeon cores at it.

I've already given up on XCode for editing, I use TextMate and relegated Xcode to the task of project & build management (for which purposes it is about adequate) and debugging. I learned last night that gdb is considerably more robust when not run via Xcode. So, in future, I will probably forgo the Xcode interface and learn gdb directly. At this point I am open to replacing XCode even for build management. Some, like Ciaran Walsh, already have.

I have to say that, as good a concept as it is, even the new Interface Builder (as much as it may be better than the version before) also sucks pretty badly with it's own weird behaviours and glitches. The "special relationship" between Xcode and IB probably doesn't help in this regard. I'm pretty sure that when IB decides to hang opening one of my Xibs it is because of Xcode.

What I often wonder is; Do Apple engineers themselves use Xcode and Interface Builder? Despite what I've heard about the number of people working on the Xcode team I find it hard to believe the tools are well used inside Apple. How could they put up with it?

I'm a hobby coder so only using these tools for a few hours at a time and not for critical work. If I was depending on them day in, day out I'd be outside the Xcode team office with a torch, pitchfork, and a mob of angry villagers.

Maybe it would be an idea for the Logic or Final Cut team to job swap with the Xcode & IB team every now and again and try and put some lipstick on these suckers.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on interface-builder

Put some lipstick on the pig