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[st33d]

Flash Builder insists I make a new project and drag files into it. It also won't debug any CS5 IDE project like FlashDevelop will. It won't show me auto-complete options for code I'm writing (I have to stab Ctrl-Period on some mystery roulette wheel mission) and the indenting for pasting code varies from intelligent to utterly retarded.

The absolute worst thing about Flash Builder 4 is that you can't set it to be the default editor for AS files through get-info. I have to resort to opening the files in the IDE. Now I have Windows on my machine I just use TextMate, or better yet, just drag them into Windows so I can use FlashDevelop and not want to throw myself out of a fucking window.

[Average Software]

XCode was pretty much the last straw in a long line of crap text editor experiences on the mac.

Not being able to indent text is a small thing. But small things are deal breakers.

Command + ] and Command + [ do block indents in Xcode, if that's what you were missing.

[st33d]

I shouldn't have to fix the fucking indents!!

When I press return after opening curly brackets - that's a fucking indent!! Every other editor knows this!! It doesn't matter what made the document!!

I tried editing the indents on a piece of code and it refused to do anything but wreck the document. Broken, broken, broken!!

[Average Software]

I shouldn't have to fix the fucking indents!!

When I press return after opening curly brackets - that's a fucking indent!! Every other editor knows this!! It doesn't matter what made the document!!

I tried editing the indents on a piece of code and it refused to do anything but wreck the document. Broken, broken, broken!!

Preferences -> Indentation

Select { } and return as automatically indented characters.

[bengrue]

After 20 years of coding, I recently started learning vim just so I had a "universal solution" to editing across all of the various OSes I was using day in and day out.

This xcode discussion is making me glad I bit that bullet.  But... when I get back into iOS development, won't I have to do parts of the process in xcode?  Or is there a command-line-only solution I haven't learned about yet?

[AndyKorth]

You don't have to do your code editing in XCode, but you will have to use it to run the build.

[Overkill]

For the record, there are some "helpful" IDE features that downright annoy me. I dislike any auto-indentation with the exception of keeping the same indent level as the previous line. And I hate auto-insertion of closing quotes and brackets. I will decide when I'm ready to close a delimiter. Some IDEs don't have the option to turn this sort of auto-insertion off (like Qt Creator, if I recall, doesn't have any way to disable this. And Eclipse and Flash Builder made it pretty annoying to find).

[Nix]

For the record, there are some "helpful" IDE features that downright annoy me. I dislike any auto-indentation with the exception of keeping the same indent level as the previous line. And I hate auto-insertion of closing quotes and brackets. I will decide when I'm ready to close a delimiter. Some IDEs don't have the option to turn this sort of auto-insertion off (like Qt Creator, if I recall, doesn't have any way to disable this. And Eclipse and Flash Builder made it pretty annoying to find).

Features are great as long as there's always an off switch.

[bengrue]

You don't have to do your code editing in XCode, but you will have to use it to run the build.

There is a way to run xcode from the command line, right?

...right?

[Average Software]

You don't have to do your code editing in XCode, but you will have to use it to run the build.

I'm pretty sure this isn't true.

I do OS X development from the command line without touching Xcode, and invoking gcc, ibtool, ditto and friends via a makefile.  It's probably just a matter of knowing the right compiler switches to target iOS rather than straight OS X.

If nothing else, there's a command line tool called xcodebuild or something that can execute the build from the command line.  We used it at MS for building Office and stuff.

[ThemsAllTook]

This xcode discussion is making me glad I bit that bullet.  But... when I get back into iOS development, won't I have to do parts of the process in xcode?  Or is there a command-line-only solution I haven't learned about yet?

I'm currently coding for the iPhone exclusively using command-line tools. It's doable, but there are some pretty severe limitations, and I still have to use either Xcode or iTunes to deploy compiled applications to a device. I haven't yet found a way to attach gdb to a device build without an associated Xcode project, and profiling is less than ideal, but printf has served me well enough for those things so far.

If you want to look at how I do it, there's a sample project here. The makefile does a whole lot of stuff and has grown into a bit of a monster, but if you look toward the bottom at install_target_iphonesimulator_template and codesign_target_iphoneos_template, you can see some of the tricks I use for command-line simulator deployment and code signing for device deployment. The readme also has some relevant info in it.

At some point I'm planning to write an article about developing like this. I'll try to remember to let you know when it's posted.

[increpare]

endless stream of bugs to fix.

extremely low energy/motivation levels right now. 

[st33d]

I shouldn't have to fix the fucking indents!!

When I press return after opening curly brackets - that's a fucking indent!! Every other editor knows this!! It doesn't matter what made the document!!

I tried editing the indents on a piece of code and it refused to do anything but wreck the document. Broken, broken, broken!!

Preferences -> Indentation

Select { } and return as automatically indented characters.

If I'm in the middle of a block it won't recognise preferences. It just fucks it up.

[Average Software]

I shouldn't have to fix the fucking indents!!

When I press return after opening curly brackets - that's a fucking indent!! Every other editor knows this!! It doesn't matter what made the document!!

I tried editing the indents on a piece of code and it refused to do anything but wreck the document. Broken, broken, broken!!

Preferences -> Indentation

Select { } and return as automatically indented characters.

If I'm in the middle of a block it won't recognise preferences. It just fucks it up.

Works fine for me with those settings.  Maybe you have another preference somewhere else that's interfering.

[mcc]

You don't have to do your code editing in XCode, but you will have to use it to run the build.

There is a way to run xcode from the command line, right?

...right?

xcodebuild

[mcc]

Anyway so despite being concerned and upset about Apple's weird and unnecessary licensing changes last night, I did go ahead and finally get XCode 4 installed.

And I'm… amazed. Behold; can you follow what is happening in this screenshot?



I seriously think this may be the worst UI I have ever seen in a commercial product.



? ? ?

The interface constantly presents you with tabs inside of tabs inside of tabs, which are themselves inside of other tabs; you also have the option of selecting "show tab bar" from a menu, in which case you will have an additional and entirely different series of Firefox-style tabs which allow you to quickly switch between different combinations of tabs. The interface presents two different tab types which I do not think I have seen before in any other OS X application; and in one place in the interface there are buttons, immediately next to tabs, which look exactly the same as the tabs, but are buttons. There are also buttons, at the top of the window, which act sort of like tabs in disguise. There are so many tabs and panes that they had to add an entire menu full of complicated keystrokes just to allow you to manage all the tabs and panes:



Can you guess, just from looking, what anything in this menu does?

The entire interface is like this; jargon you've never seen before, hundreds of buttons with tiny icons that you'll have to individually look up on google at some point to see what they do and whose function is usually not guessable either from the icon, the name in the tooltip, or the error message that inevitably pops up when you try it. Nothing seems to conform to the expectations you'd have built up from using either Mac OS X, or any other IDE in the world. One example I like: Before, in XCode 3, the way to get to your project's settings was to select your project and type command-i, to get the "inspector". The "inspector", if you're not a mac user, is the little omnipresent equivalent of what used to be the "Get Info" box. It's one of the most consistently present interface conventions in OS X apps, especially apps Apple designed. If you select your project and type command-i in XCode 4, this happens:



The correct way to get to your project settings now is to look in a tab which is inside of another tab.

Then there's the little things. XCode 4 crashed on me literally within ten seconds of the first time I launched it. Pressing the + (maximize) button in the window bar regularly causes windows to become wider than the screen itself. Typing "false" brings up a popup autocomplete asking if you mean "false" or "FALSE". Among the many cryptic icons in the interface are three labeled "Editor"; what do they mean? Experimentally pressing each one in turn, I managed to make this happen:



Then this:



And the worst thing is, I can't go back, because you have to use XCode 4 if you installed iPhone OS 4.3.

I no longer worry about how we will handle distribution of XCode 4 at work, because I cannot imagine why anyone would willingly install this.

[bengrue]

mcc, after your post I move we rename this "the sad, soul-crushed programmers room"

[mcc]

I was really excited about XCode 4! I liked XCode 3 so much I even did Win32 programming in it.

[bengrue]

I really like MSVC.  It's almost as if some parts of microsoft eat their own dogfood there.

Some.

[st33d]

Yo dawg, I herd you like tabs...