tayistay

I know pro users of Logic and Ableton and they never express such a level of displeasure. FWIW, having used Logic, Ableton, FCP, all non-professionally, those apps seem like a dream compared to Xcode.

I think it's likely that if Xcode weren't free, there would be serious competition and iOS development would be better for it. Or perhaps if Xcode were modularized so 3rd parties could use parts of it (Instruments, GPU debugger, memory graph debugger), lowering their development cost so they can compete with free.

I tried AppCode and while it seemed nice (refactoring was good in particular), I kept returning to Xcode to use the GPU debugger IIRC.

So, amusingly, I'm the inverse of your impression: the IDEs I've tried superficially I've generally enjoyed. The one I've used deeply I detest.

Comment · 1 year ago

Ok well you asked. I've been using Xcode for 15 years now professionally. I have two CS degrees and one of my apps was featured on the Mac App Store front page. So, basically, I know wtf I'm talking about.

I detest Xcode.

The latest horrible thing it has done to me is decide to ignore various important Build Settings, throwing them under User-Defined. Doesn't say way. Just pure magic bullshit.

It crashes occasionally, but that doesn't bother me that much. You just laugh at how bad it is and restart it.

Sometimes you'll get some code-signing errors and you just reboot. I kid you not. You reboot and they go away.

Xcode's connection to Xcode Cloud is pretty flakey too. Quite often it will fail to log in. You just restart Xcode and it goes away.

Xcode will display errors that are out of date all the time. I've gotten so good at knowing which errors are just BS that I'm kinda proud of myself.

Previews are useless. They could be so great but as soon as you break one, the debugging experience is so bad, you just give up. Sometimes your project will fail to build with them and the reasons are so opaque you just give up.

The xcodeproj file format is merge hell. It's so telling that tools like Xcodegen exist.

The new LLM-based code completion thing is mostly just amusing. Definitely not ready for prime time.

There's clearly no CI on the template projects because if you archive the Audio Unit one, the swift compiler crashes currently. Wheee!

Nobody uses the git integration on Xcode AFAICT. It runs faster if you just turn it off.

The GPU debugger is quite a crashy mess, though it has gotten better. Still you will not be able to debug your shaders and you'll have no idea why. The GPU debugger doesn't work if you put any MSL code inside a Swift package too. I used to have an icky work around for that, then just gave up on modularizing my project to the extent I would like to.

I experienced the issue mentioned in the article: couldn't add local packages by dragging them in. But somewhere along the line it went away. Don't know why, and I don't have the time to dig into it.

I really should compile a proper list. I'm sure I can think of more, especially if I go through the list of bugs I've filed over the years.

Anyway, now you've heard this opinion expressed by an experienced person. Consider it a data point.

Comment · 1 year ago

What podcast?

Comment · 1 year ago

I suspect the problem there is that the multiple paths to a new location will not yield consistent results.

Comment · 1 year ago

Google says: “California is the largest agricultural exporter in the United States”

Comment · 2 years ago

If you have a recent machine, the actual developer experience isn't too bad. It's just not a language for language purists (was it ever?).

I'm enough of a purist to be annoyed whenever I see the "expression took too long to type check" error. (I think bidirectional type inference isn't worth it with Swift)

The gaggle of verbose pointer types makes me want to switch to C++ whenever I have to deal with memory directly.

As the article mentions, a bunch of features were added for the sake of SwiftUI. Function builders allow SwiftUI's syntax to be minimal. They allow you to write:

  VStack {
     SomeView()
     AnotherView()
  }

instead of something like

  VStack(
     SomeView(),
     AnotherView()
  )

Given the rather bad (still!) error messages you get with SwiftUI that seem to be a result of function builders, I'd say it wasn't worth it. At least I get fewer of the "couldn't produce a diagnostic, please file a bug" errors than I used to.

Then there are property wrappers, which wrap struct/class fields with get/set code (IIRC Lattner didn't like the property wrappers). They've been partially replaced in SwiftUI by macros. The @Observable macro (probably the most widely used one) decorates your class with code that notifies listeners (almost always SwiftUI) of changes. I'd be curious to see what SwiftUI would look like without property wrappers (or macros).

I think they had a missed opportunity to really add robust updating of views in response state changes. Currently it's still relatively easy to not have your SwiftUI views update because your data model uses some object that isn't @Observable.

I wrote a UI library inspired by SwiftUI, but in Rust [1], and of course I couldn't add anything to the language, and more experienced Rust programmers discouraged me from using macros. So it can be done without all the extra stuff Swift added.

[1] https://github.com/audulus/rui

Comment · 2 years ago

Does the article mention if the 1 in 6 is actually a change vs previous years/generations? I didn’t see anything.

Comment · 2 years ago

Well, probably wouldn't be able to convince you that the artists playing shows using Euroroack (or Elektron, or TE) in front of bigger audiences that you ever have are "genuinely good."

Comment · 2 years ago

> The OLED never really shows you anything useful to the act of music-making.

Thou art prone to hyperbole! Said instrument of synthesis ("Operator-1") has a step sequencer, mixer, ADSR envelopes, recorder, and other useful indications for the bard. One ponders how thou hast not consulted the scrolls [1].

[1] https://teenage.engineering/_img/54b7f9bf8681400300255cab_or...

Comment · 2 years ago

Blasphemy! Thou shalt not present such claims without the proper scrolls and ledgers of sales to substantiate. Ist thou not acquainted with the more-expensive instruments of musical synthesis available?