Once in a while I see an argument like this and I wonder - does this guy really do mobile development? For the better part of last year I was into Android development, in Eclipse. If XCode is garbage, I don't know what Eclipse is. Resource-hogging, buggy monster with seven heads with shit on them, probably. I could list annoyances of Eclipse that got me for hours. On the other hand, in last month I jumped in to iOS development. And XCode was a breeze. Sure, it has its own gotchas, but many of them either have fixes or workarounds, and the start/build speed is just fantastic, compared to slow Eclipse and Android emulator.
...
in last month I jumped in to iOS development. And XCode was a breeze
Something's off here. You're questioning veteran iOS developers' abilities after having started iOS development a month ago?
I used to do iOS development and still keep in touch with several iOS developers of apps everyone has on their devices. The best I can get out of any of them is "XCode is okay", but more often than not, there's expletives and scathing remarks, especially since XCode 4, when they "iTunesified" the interface.
You just started iOS development, which means you're still getting the hang of things and the workflows. Give it a little time before you call people out.
That said, I can't say that Android development is much better, although I've just gone through the tutorials on developer.android.com for the heck of it.
Compare this with iOS development. IntelliJ's AppCoder is nice, but because quite a lot of things can be only done from XCode, Appcoder is second class citizen. Let me re-iterate, if you haven't used Appcoder, it is a vastly superior IDE compared to Xcode any given day.
Also, the ADT bundle that Google now has works way better than downloading Eclipse and installing the plugin.
Although, I agree with you, I think Xcode works quite well. But, there are improvements that could be made...
Nope. Like my comment said: "Targeting the Mac"
File -> New -> Project
See all that fun stuff under listed under OS X?
How dare you try to call someone out for being rude when your first comment to them was that.
Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.[1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_Simon [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I really don't think you are properly equipped to debate things on HN. You should go back to Digg. It's your natural home.
Besides that I'll just repeat what was that here and what's said in pretty much every discussion mentioning Eclipse: IntelliJ Idea.
The only thing I really miss about iOS development when doing Android work is not having blocks in Java, and it's still generally Good Enough if I squint and pretend that anonymous inner classes are equivalent. (IntelliJ helps to reinforce this illusion with automatic folding, too.) The iOS simulator is a bit better, but I don't generally find myself really missing it, especially since developing on a real device is much better in Android land.
Xcode is way behind the times in terms of automated assistance while coding. Every time I have to stop in the middle of writing some code to go up and add an #import that the IDE could easily add itself, I hate Xcode a little more. And that's really the tip of the iceberg.
I'm really hoping that AppCode 2.0 can give me the IntelliJ experience for iOS coding, because Xcode 4 has been a disaster from day one and is not getting better fast enough.
Your opinion may differ, but please don't act like disagreement can only be due to ignorance.
Thank you for the time and effort put into NSBlog. It's awesome. Had no idea you write for Android now. Will there ever be an NSBlog equivalent for Android?
Which is why whenever I see the XCode vs Eclipse talk I'm left with the gut wrenching feeling of hating them both.
Also it'd be nice if the IDE supported the platform languages (Java and ObjC).
And this is coming from a huge fan of Qt and a KDE user.
EDIT: So far I'm seeing a lot of reasons why Apple wanted to get into maps. A lot of the value add here seems to be navigation related.
I searched for sports teams so my now cards will show up with scheduled games as well as previous scores, but only immediately before and after games. It's not permanent clutter.
Handles package tracking. No more logging into amazon and going through my cart to find a tracking number, or digging in email.
It does meetings notifications based on how soon I need to leave to get to the location. Previously I'd have to find out how far away the location was and set a reminder for that amount of time and leave enough time for traffic. Not having to worry about an accident or construction is spectacular. This is really my killer feature.
Google Now does all of that automatically.
Another story, this time where I was the one visiting: after spending a night at friends, Google Now added a card for directions and driving time back to what it called "Unknown location." From my location info, it surmised I was staying at that place and was offering directions back. Being in a foreign city, this was actually very useful.
Creepy, yes, but useful.
It also regularly updates me when my flights status changes (delays, gates changed, that sort of thing).
That can be useful, but it's usually just an annoyance as I only wanted to call them or do something on their website.
Anybody have a solution to deactivate that behaviour?
Appointments has a nice reminder that you need to get somewhere and it will take X amount of time, so you should leave at Y.
Traffic card is amazingly helpful and surprisingly very accurate.
Another Stockholm-syndrome patient cured! I recently took over a prototype project targeting the Mac. XCode is garbage. OS X itself actively works against improving your workflow. It's Apple's way or, well Apple's way. iOS is built to keep the user in a padded cell (aka Walled Garden) and OS X is moving in that direction.
Use Cyanogenmod. Be Free. Google Now is amazing by the way. Unfortunately I had to turn my google search history back on, but it was worth it.