Xcode Through the Years

https://martiancraft.com/blog/2022/01/xcode-through-the-years/

by ingve • 4 years ago

90 77 4 years ago

martiancraft.com

pjmlp3• 4 years ago

Nice overview, but the precursor from Project Builder is missing.

https://paulhammant.com/2013/03/28/interface-builders-altern...

fatboy• 4 years ago

I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong with Xcode. Every time there's a new update I have to go through a rigmarole to get back my customised keyboard shortcuts. I don't have loads of them, and they're normally standard in other editors (control-w for select word, control-shift-K for delete current line, super-shift-d for duplicate current line etc). But every time there's a new update for Xcode they get borked for me. In the old days the customisation file was kept outside the .app in application support or something, but then at some point they moved it inside so any "update" overwrites the changes I've made (there are actually no updates, only full downloads of a ~10GB application for the smallest change).

It's very bizarre and contrary to the ethos of macOS applications that's existed for decades I believe.

blakesterz• 4 years ago

I had to give up on Xcode. I found it so damn buggy and weird I just couldn't use it. Just yesterday I tried opening a json file and it attempted to open in Xcode... Xcode just froze, never opened the file.

TheOtherHobbes• 4 years ago

Xcode is one of those products that suggest Apple has simply stopped caring about quality. It sort of works if you're lucky, but realistically it's questionably usable. And Apple just doesn't seem to care.

It's not like the company can't afford to throw some resources at it. But it... doesn't. And the process for extras like AU plugin development - not central, but a significant mini-economy in the ecosystem - used to be so much simpler than it is now.

That aside, historically my favourite accessory was Quartz Composer. It ended up being a dead end, but personally I had a blast experimenting with it and building generative animations.

kklisura2• 4 years ago

My experience with Xcode is that almost every time it got updated, an ios app project compilation (react-native app) broke in some way. Very frustrating!

aaaaaaaaaaab• 4 years ago

react-native app

Found your problem.

buescher• 4 years ago

That's the way all IDEs were back in the 90s.

alexfringes• 4 years ago

Xcode saves keybindings in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/UserData/KeyBindings I have neither experienced arbitrary resets across updates, nor have I had issues moving my custom .idekeybindings from that folder to new clean installs and finding my shortcuts intact. Maybe the update issue occurs when using the default bindings set and a change of functionality intersects with your customizations? Might be helpful to create an alternate set and go from there. Then, when updates roll in, it should be easy to track down new conflicts in Xcode's preferences via the Conflicts filter. Not sure what else might be causing it, sorry, but thought I'd point you to the folder anyway.

ridiculous_fish• 4 years ago

Just wanted to say thanks for Xcode. Bundling it with OS X was brilliant and made it so much easier to get started writing software. I even used it for Java! I have written more LoC in Xcode than in any other tool, and though its focus has shifted away from the software I write, I still consider it fondly.

anonymouse0082• 4 years ago

Seconded!

Xcode alone almost justifies the 30% cut on apps. A single developer can do remarkable things because of Xcode + Swift + SwiftUI+ Package Manager + all the fixings for cross platform (Linux, Windows... etc).

Strong opinion: this will win all the things (building a language tightly with a development environment, old intersection of software + hardware vibes)

Relatedly: Vapor is doing great things Swift Server Side, and Tokamak is bringing SwiftUI to the web like WebObjects aimed to do... I have yet to go deep into embedded works with Swift, but I believe that CL left some goodies based on his previous experience.

Even after being 5th degree burned by Mac gatekeeper, I hold these opinions -- eventually it will be write once, run everywhere.

Seeing where it's all heading makes one as giddy as a young Woz

kaba0• 4 years ago

Xcode alone almost justifies the 30% cut on apps

Come on, that’s ridiculous even if I take it as an exaggeration. On what grounds would it have anything to do with the revenue one creates through an app they made? It would be an equivalent of the canvas’s manufacturer Mona Lisa is painted on wanting recognition for their work.

ardit33• 4 years ago

I agree. People find it normal to get an IDE for free, but when Apple released XCode for free, it was an innovation. (VB Basic/Pro, Borland, and all cost money when they started).

The only competitors were Eclipse, and VI/VIM and other lightweight editors. But, even Eclipse, initially was part of the IBM premium enterprise tools, called Websphere.

So, just like they released the iOS updates for free, and MacOS X for free, (in 2008-2009), Apple has been a true innovator in this space. Microsoft and Co were always chasing behind.

mrpippy• 4 years ago

Development tools for classic MacOS cost money too, since they were commercial software like anything else. Metrowerks CodeWarrior, Lightspeed/Symantec C/C++/Pascal, even Apple’s own Macintosh Programmers Workshop.

danachow3• 4 years ago

Eclipse was free and open source from the beginning and predates Xcode. That it was derived from an even older commercial product doesn’t seem that relevant.

vbezhenar• 4 years ago

KDevelop was released in 1999, rewritten (version 3) in 2001. XCode was released in 2003. Eclipse was around. Emacs and vim-based development environment were immensely popular.

And Visual Studio was much better than Xcode (and probably still is). Yes, it was not free, but it was worth its money. I know guy who used Visual Studio to write code for Linux.

Xcode is not even open source. Intellij is open source, Eclipse is open source, Visual Studio Code is open source.

At this point they should just write VSCode plugin to edit storyboards and language server for objective c and swift. Xcode is beyond redemption.

watersb3• 4 years ago

Ironic shudder, as I just recalled that I paid $3000 for NeXTStep Developer in 1993.

I was making exactly zero dollars as a developer at the time. Or, I suppose, negative-three-grand, actually...

So another thing: all of the documentation (which is in need of some work). Books, web sites, Youtube channels, free tutorials... That stuff wasn't free in 1993, either.

pjmlp3• 4 years ago

XCode wasn't free really, considering the hardware price.

Mac price ~= PC + VS Professional

alberth• 4 years ago

Still costs $99 to publish to App Store.

umvi• 4 years ago

It's worse than that. It's $99 per year you want to keep it in the store. Stop paying the tax and it's taken down, even if it was free software to begin with.

nlitened• 4 years ago

Developers boasting 300—500k total comps who are greedy to spend 100 bucks a year on their tools is freaking insane to me, man.

How much does gas cost for truck drivers?

eschaton• 4 years ago

Thanks from a happy user of some of those early lines of code you wrote. ;)

andrewcl• 4 years ago

It's always been incredible to me that Interface Builder dates back to NextStep, like that's all the way back to 1988! While I don't on the regular use IB, I've always appreciated how easy it is to hook things up and move ahead with a prototype.

SeanLuke3• 4 years ago

Actually, Interface Builder predates NeXTSTEP. Like all revolutionary tools, IB was originally in Lisp. It ran on the Mac.

dpeck• 4 years ago

It’d be nice to track the hard drive space it uses through the years too. Oof.

grishka4• 4 years ago

From my perspective it's so funny that the author considers paid SDKs to be a showstopper. Yeah, right, absolutely no way around it.

Here in Russia paying for software is kind of a novel idea even today. Back in the mid-00s, literally no one even considered that as a possibility. You could go to a store and buy a pre-cracked version of Visual C++ on CD for 60 roubles (~2$ at the time). I still have mine somewhere.

And macs were so expensive no one could afford one. My first contact with OS X was through installing hackintosh on the PC I had at the time.

marcodiego• 4 years ago

Makes me remember a phrase from "Revolution OS" about free software: "That sounds too much like communism to work in Russia".

solarkraft2• 4 years ago

It's still friction. Maybe this was different in Russia, but due to propaganda (term used neutrally) further west people actually feel guilty about "stealing" software, are concerned about malware and lack resources for information.

Internet piracy is of course a thing, but I'm not sure physical pirated media was ever this available here.

grishka4• 4 years ago

Honestly, to me it feels like it's often more friction to pay.

If you want to pay, you have to register for an account, provide your card info, get the key, activate, etc. If it's a subscription, it gets even worse.

If you don't want to pay, you download the torrent and install the thing. Maybe you follow the (often simple) included instructions to crack it, if any. And that's really it. It just works forever. I remember that story how then-CEO of VKontakte paid for photoshop (back when you could pay for it just once), couldn't figure out how to download and activate it, and just torrented it because it's this much easier.

They closed those CD stores when Russia joined the cartel^W WTO. But by that time, high-speed internet was getting ever more available, and so naturally people just switched to downloads.

And another thing about Russian mentality: we REALLY don't like asking for help it seems. When you've bought something, you're on your own if you have any problems. Maybe ask for help on forums or something, but official support channels? Nah. Like, I'm well aware that Apple provides tech support, but whenever I have any problems with Apple products, the thought of contacting that tech support doesn't ever cross my mind. In many people's minds, me included, your relationship with the manufacturer or seller of the thing you're buying ends the moment the transaction completes. It's probably vastly different in the west.

elpakal3• 4 years ago

Great article, very cool to read. But I can’t help but wonder if it’s time for Apple to provide its developers with a pure Swift IDE - all of my CLI apps and anything Swift server related always end up working a lot easier in CLion (which I happily pay for). I have to use Xcode for my day job and man does it seem bloated (call me old but the new GitHub code review feature is completely unusable IMHO). And storyboards? Don’t get me started.

melissalobos• 4 years ago

But I can’t help but wonder if it’s time for Apple to provide its developers with a pure Swift IDE

You mean an IDE only for Swift or only written in Swift? That last few projects I worked on that involved Swift all had some Obj-C or C++ components, so no matter what I would really like support for other languages in an IDE they offer.

elpakal3• 4 years ago

I meant only for Swift but I wrote the comment while walking and on my phone, I’m sure I forgot to think about some things.

akkawwakka• 4 years ago

You might be happy with something like VSCode + sourcekit-lsp once that combo gets more mature.

saagarjha4• 4 years ago

Sounds like you’ll enjoy Swift Playgrounds.

tonyedgecombe2• 4 years ago

I got the impression that Swift Playgrounds was really Xcode in the background with most of the UI hidden. It certainly didn't feel snappy to me when I last tried it.

JodieBenitez2• 4 years ago

Why CLion and not AppCode which seems more suited to the task ?

elpakal3• 4 years ago

Only because of a JetBrains license I get through work

tonyedgecombe2• 4 years ago

If they do my guess is it will be in the cloud.

And storyboards? Don’t get me started.

Does anybody use them?

SeanLuke3• 4 years ago

This article makes a number of odd claims about Project Builder. I'm not sure what passes for an "IDE" nowadays, but Project Builder did not have an editor at all: I'd think that'd be a defining feature of an IDE. The editor distributed with NeXTSTEP was the completely separate Edit.app (later known as TextEdit.app on OS X). Project Builder was just (1) a GUI wrapper for make (2) a project file manager, and (3) a GUI wrapper for gdb. That's it. Project Builder was neither connected to Objective C, nor to Interface Builder, nor to Edit.app. And while Interface Builder was revolutionary, Project Builder was prosaic and far from first of its kind. Here's NeXT's own documentation on PB:

http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/NeXTStep/3.3/nd/...

XCode was a massive improvement over ProjectBuilder, not the least of which because it had an integrated editor. It was an actual IDE.

pavlov• 4 years ago

Project Builder in the early years of Mac OS X certainly had an integrated editor.

SeanLuke3• 4 years ago

Yes, but this was a far cry from ProjectBuilder in NeXTSTEP. See for example

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mac-os-x/0596003706/ch1...

I imagine what happened was: when Apple acquired NeXT, Apple's dev teams built an entirely new application, initially still called ProjectBuilder, as part of the Carbon development effort. This is what eventually became XCode. Or perhaps NeXT had this in their pocket but had not released it yet (this seems much less likely).

But this had little to do with Project Builder on NeXTSTEP 3.x and 4.x.

protomyth• 4 years ago

I still think the Project Builder / Interface Builder combo was better than an integrated Xcode. Xcode has always felt slow and laggy compared to its predecessor. Plus, a lot of Xcode was just worse at doing interfaces.

daed• 4 years ago

Agree. To this day I open all xibs in a new window.

xwowsersx2• 4 years ago

I just recently started programming with Swift. As a user of many JetBrains products, I'm curious to know if many Mac/iOS programmers use AppCode. Is that a viable IDE for iOS programming?

hboon• 4 years ago

I don't know how many. But I use it. It's slower than Xcode. But I use it for most of my iOS (and macOS) programming work.

poink• 4 years ago

AppCode's great for what it does, but you still use Xcode a lot for things AppCode doesn't do. You can probably reduce the Xcode dependency by replacing parts of its functionality with stuff like XcodeGen if this bothers you. I almost always have both open at once. IME very few iOS devs use it, but I'm just saying that because I've never worked with one.

xwowsersx2• 4 years ago

Yeah I'm interested in giving it a shot because I am so used to all the keyboard and navigation shortcuts that work across all the JetBrains IDEs. I use DataGrip, PyCharm, and Android Studio daily already and throwing Xcode into the mix really throws me off.

sedan_baklazhan• 4 years ago

It's probably fair to say that XCode was a great app 35 and even 25 years ago, an OK app 15 years ago (at that moment it was far behind Visual Studio). Now it's completely lagging behind almost everything. I suppose that working on a same codebase for 35 years is not simple and introduces nearly-unfixable bugs. The fact that XCode consist of tens of thousands of files (!) and unpacking it on an HDD takes hours, is just a small issue, comparing with others. The IDE has to be rewritten from scratch. It's unmanageable right now, and has been for years. Apple can't really support it anymore.

mro_name• 4 years ago

indeed,

it shows the same obesity as the company's shareholder value.

A big amount of money produces a big amount of things.

Conway says, the product resembles the producer.

Never expect lean things from big corps, no matter how slick the name.

hughrr• 4 years ago

I think that’s coming. The push for swift will drive it.

saagarjha4• 4 years ago

tens of thousands of files

Try half a million.

flohofwoe2• 4 years ago

...and most of this in platform SDKs, which could easily be installed separately.

logbiscuitswave• 4 years ago

I primarily use Visual Studio and VSCode for development professionally. I have been playing around with Xcode a lot for some personal projects on my Mac.

In many ways it’s pretty good, but there’s some omissions and other behaviors that I find simply astonishing.

Why can’t I view two code windows side-by-side? Why can’t I dock the controls library so it’s always visible? Why does the documentation view always have to be on top of everything else? Why can I zoom the Interface Builder when building iOS applications but not Mac applications? Why do things just kind of stop working and require restarting every couple of hours?

In many ways Xcode just seems to lack a lot of the polish and capability Visual Studio has.

I tried playing with Visual Studio and Xamarin on my Mac to see if it could accelerate development by allowing me to leverage my familiarity with C# and found it to be so cumbersome (change to Xcode and mess around with IB, switch to VS, switch back to Xcode…ugh) that I just ditched that flow completely and went all in with Swift/SwiftUI/Obj-C instead.

terhechte• 4 years ago

I mostly agree but

Why can’t I view two code windows side-by-side?

This works just fine. You can have unlimited horizontal panes each having the same or a different file. Or, you can open a second Xcode window of the same project (e.g. right click a file and open in new window) hide the UI and you have multiple editor windows for the same project (something VSCode can only do in a limited fashion)

saagarjha4• 4 years ago

Not solutions to your problems, but perhaps some background you might find interesting:

Why can’t I dock the controls library so it’s always visible?

This actually used to be how it was before. It got changed into an overlay panel a couple years ago.

Why can I zoom the Interface Builder when building iOS applications but not Mac applications?

It’s an implementation detail of how it works under-the-hood. iOS interface is rendered in what’s essentially a simulator and screenshotted, so you can zoom the result freely. For macOS the controls you are seeing are real Mac controls, which do not render at arbitrary magnifications.

rsfinn• 4 years ago

Why can’t I view two code windows side-by-side?

You can: in general, pressing option will open a new code editor (the exact behavior is configurable in Preferences > Navigation > "Optional Navigation"). For example, option-click a file in the Project Navigator to open it in the "next" editor; this will open a second editor if only one is open.

In exchange, I'd genuinely like to know how to open more than one solution at a time in Visual Studio for Mac. I know about the checkbox in the Options panel of the Open dialog, but if you don't remember to turn that off every time it closes your existing solution. Also, it's documented that holding the Control key when choosing from Recent Solutions has this effect, but that has never worked for me.

flohofwoe2• 4 years ago

I'm outing myself as actually, mostly, liking Xcode (as a "mostly C/C++ cross-platform coder", haven't dabbled much with the interface builder side of things).

But some things really need to be fixed:

- Downloads are getting way too big, and most of this is all the platform SDKs. Those SDKs should be removed from the initial download and instead installed when actually needed or with an integrated "package manager". As it is now, I'm just using 3 (iPhoneOS, iPhoneOSSimulator and MacOSX) of the 7 installed SDKs, the other 4 SDKs (2x AppletTVOS and 2x WatchOS) are just dead weight.

- Don't know how it's in Swift, but starting for the first time into the debugger takes 5..10 seconds, even on my new 14"MBP, and even for trivial programs. This used to be instant a couple of years ago, but then got worse over time.

- The debugger's variable view panel is way too bare bones, and doesn't seem to have been improved much in the last two decades.

- "Schemes"... 'nuff said.

- Something needs to be done about the extension/plugin ecosystem (e.g. there is none, just a handful of extensions in the app store), look at Visual Studio Code for inspiration.

Also, I'm not sure what the "new build system" is about, but from my point of view it didn't really improve anything over the old build system. Maybe the resources should instead have been spent on something that actually benefits users.

Plenty of good stuff too:

- The clang static analyzer integration with the 'arrow visualization' is brilliant.

- AFAIK it was the first IDE to integrate ASAN, TSAN and UBSAN easy enough to use "for the rest of us".

- Probably also the first IDE with realtime memory usage visualization, Visual Studio only got this in VS2015 if I remember right.

- The Metal debugger.

Xcode Through the Years

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