I've worked with Xcode since it was Project Builder. And I worked with Visual C++ from the days when it was two disparate versions, one 16-bit and one 32-bit.
I used to love Visual Studio. Not MFC and its crap-heap of hokey macros, but the IDE. Project Builder was primitive as hell by comparison.
Fast-forward 20 years, and Visual Studio is still plagued by the same ridiculous UI defects it suffered from in the '90s, and Xcode is vastly improved from Project Builder.
I've heard (and evidence bears it out) that there's no one left at Apple who understands how Xcode works at this point. The giant piles of settings, many of which are specified in multiple places in multiple ways, and the corruptibility of the project files... once your project goes wrong there's often no coming back. Granted, this is far less frequent than it used to be, but still... this thing needs a ground-up rewrite behind the scenes.
I work in Xcode daily, and I would be open to trying something else if I thought it would fully integrate all of the non-coding BS that encrusts development. Specifically things like code-signing, certificates, SDK locations, simulator integration... Do third-party IDEs offer seamless support for all that stuff?
Thanks. That's why I haven't bothered to explore anything like that. It's enough of a PITA in Apple's own tools, without troubleshooting third-party hacks.
On the other hand, I did a desktop project in Qt and was shocked at how decently it generated and built an Xcode project. I did have to write a script to sign and package the app for distribution, but it wasn't as painful as plain-old iPhone development used to be simply because of the wildly unreliable certificate BS in Xcode.
I used to love Visual Studio. Not MFC and its crap-heap of hokey macros, but the IDE. Project Builder was primitive as hell by comparison.
Fast-forward 20 years, and Visual Studio is still plagued by the same ridiculous UI defects it suffered from in the '90s, and Xcode is vastly improved from Project Builder.
I've heard (and evidence bears it out) that there's no one left at Apple who understands how Xcode works at this point. The giant piles of settings, many of which are specified in multiple places in multiple ways, and the corruptibility of the project files... once your project goes wrong there's often no coming back. Granted, this is far less frequent than it used to be, but still... this thing needs a ground-up rewrite behind the scenes.
I work in Xcode daily, and I would be open to trying something else if I thought it would fully integrate all of the non-coding BS that encrusts development. Specifically things like code-signing, certificates, SDK locations, simulator integration... Do third-party IDEs offer seamless support for all that stuff?