New thing this year, but VSCode + with Apple's SourceKit LSP extension [1] has been working surprisingly well for me. Glad to have more alternatives to Xcode.

Have been using SPM's "swift build" + some copy commands to create a fully functional signable bundle, no need even for an .xcodeproj.

[1] https://nshipster.com/vscode/

I'm curious about this. Could you do iOS app development this way? Or at least native Mac development using cocoa like you could in xcode?

Yes! The build just produces a single executable. For example, in a Mac app this would be the file inside Contents/MacOS.

You then need to create a folder with an .app extension, set up a simple folder structure, and add some necessities such as the Info.plist file and your resources like the app icon/images. And codesign or notarize depending on your deployment requirements.

Code completion works great for dev and I've found VSCode to be snappier than Xcode even if the underlying engine (SourceKit) is supposed to be the same. The only thing "missing" is not having Interface Builder, but probably most serious projects use code-generated UIs anyway. You could, of course, still make an .xib file in Xcode and use it in your VSCode project. (I don't have a MainMenu.xib myself.)

See: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...

Thank you for sharing!

The best part about JetBrains products is you learn one IDE and can use it with just about any language -- Java, C, Swift, Kotlin, C#, etc.