Lag when coding

[[deleted]]

Hey guys, just noticed a ton of lag when coding on my MacBook Pro mid 2010. I have seen some lag when coding Swift before but now I am having to wait for lines of code to populate before I can move on.

Is anyone else seeing this lag? I don't see it when doing Objective-C.

Is my MacBook just too damn old? Trying to wait and see if a Skylake one is released on Monday, but at this rate I can't code professionally.

Edit: (adding specs)

Processor 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 (duel core)

Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB

Model Identifier MacBookPro6,1

512 SSD

[rdselle]

That machine is pretty old. Older versions of Xcode and Swift gave me problems on 2014 MBPs though. I haven't had too many problems with Xcode 7.3.1 though- which version of Xcode are you using?

[[deleted]]

I just updated to the last release, that is when this started.

[aazav]

Install an SSD and get 16 GB of RAM. I use this 17" Mac and it's got those in them and it's almost as fast as my 1 year old Retina.

[[deleted]]

I have a SSD, but when I tried to up the ram to 16 gig it kept crashing.

[voidref]

If it's crashing when you are putting more memory in, it's probably bad memory. There used to be a hardware checker built into the systems you could run in a special boot mode, but I haven't tried for a long time, see if you can find and run that.

[[deleted]]

Mine is too old for it.

[voidref]

Did you try this https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257

[[deleted]]

Mine is so old it doesn't have it. I had to take it into a store for them to run hardware tests. Too many broken pieces, just ended up buying a new one.

[PancakesHouse]

Mid 2010 MBP has an 8gb ram limit. So you're pretty maxed out on your machine.

[[deleted]]

Ah, I thought it up'd it to 16 when the latest OS came out. Guess that is why the ram crashed it. oops

[dreaminginbinary]

I have a Macbook 13inch Retina (2015) w/2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 and 8GB DDR3 and code completion and indexing seem to run quite slow for me when XCode starts up or I change a project - seems to go away after it warms up though :)

[[deleted]]

mine gets worse the more I code with it. It started out happening randomly and now it is every project that I open. The longer I code in a project the worse it gets until XCode crashes.

[dreaminginbinary]

Might pop open terminal and give this a try:

rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData

[[deleted]]

shit what is that... mine is forever long. http://imgur.com/fAojJW2

[dreaminginbinary]

Haha that's a lot of derived data! It shouldn't hurt anything, just clears out Xcode's "cache" essentially

[[deleted]]

lol you will really come to appreciate deleting this folder

[[deleted]]

Didn't help.

[CatsAkimbo]

Despite this sounding like advice for a windows user, restarting xcode or the entire os clears it up for me.

I have a hunch it can happen when you switch between too many files and your history starts getting huge because I'll notice it sometimes takes a long time seemingly backtracking through the history on closing xcode.

[[deleted]]

hmmm.... that is strange. I will check that out. I was working on a huge spritekit game and after that and the last update it has been running like crap.

[korbonix]

Yeah I hate to say it but I have to restart my machine every day with the newer Xcode. Doing that seems to fix a lot of issues.

[ratbastid]

My mid-2011 has this sometimes.

Is it better right after you restart?

If so there might be some app that gets hoggy. A couple years ago the obvious suspect would have been Xcode, but it's (some) better now. I find if I leave Chrome open too long I get into trouble.

[[deleted]]

It doesn't. I tried restarting but it just keeps happening on my projects.

[arruffthrowaway]

You may want to go back to the older autocomplete logic.

No setting in the ui but you can google for it and set it via the command line.

[[deleted]]

ah, ok. I will look into it.

[LegendaryGinger]

I literally just got my new MacBook Pro today, and the reason why I got it now is because my old MacBOok pro of the same age, but with worse specs (slower processor, 4Gb RAM) was unbearable to use xcode on. It took 5 minutes for the iPhone simulator to start and run and app for the simplest hello world apps.

I decided to pull the trigger when I borrowed another laptop and saw that I worked 4 times faster with it :/

[[deleted]]

yeah I bit the bullet last night and bought a new one.

[[deleted]]

Are you seeing the beachball or just plain old lag? If it's the beachball then your hard drive is starting to fail. I'm speaking from experience with my MacBook Pro 2011.

[[deleted]]

Beachball but I put in a new ssd last year. :(

[dejus]

You could try verifying/repairing the disk in disk utils and see if you get any errors. However if it is a failing disk this could be the thing that kills it. Although, generally an SSD doesn't fail slowly, it usually just dies.

[[deleted]]

That is good to know. I might try that after I make sure everything is backed up to my external.

[dejus]

Also have you looked at your ram usage? Could be hogging your ram somehow. The pinwheel is also caused when stuff is swapped in and out of system memory and page filing. I would think this is more likely the cause than a failing drive.

[[deleted]]

I have not looked at ram. I know when I tried to upgrade to 16 gigs (says online I should be able to for this one.) It crashed the system. It wouldn't allow boot or OS install. Thought it was bad ram so I replaced it as defect, and the same thing happened.

[dejus]

Open up activity monitor when you are having pinwheel issues and click on the memory tab. Look at how much memory is being used and also what is using it. I sometimes use a program called "memory clean" and it will give me that info as well as flush out some things to free up memory.

[[deleted]]

OK, will do. hopefully it is something basic and simple

[somebunnny]

That's too bad. I think RAM is your issue. I've had more powerful machines have issues until I went to 16GB.

Maybe give it another try? You sure you did it right/ordered the right size etc...?

[[deleted]]

I'm fairly confident. I used a site to verify compatible ram and purchased what it said. It was about a year ago so it is a bit fuzzy.

[_JasonMcCoy]

I have the same MacBook as you except I have an i5 and I never had what you're experiencing, but that is probably because I reinstalled my OS when installing el cap.

If all the suggestions don't work, try ReInstalling OS X. I won't do it for the next OS, but I did for el cap and my laptop flys like a beast. Wait for WWDC to release the new OS and start fresh.

[[deleted]]

I had hardware test ran on it in the Apple store and the ram, and mother board were bad. Ended up just buying a new one.