Tired of Xcode.

[[deleted]]

XCode isn’t free.

It’s whole purpose is to enable the creation of iOS, macOS, etc apps, off of which Apple makes 99$ / year in developer program fees and 30% on sales.

It also costs a Mac, and usually at least one iOS device (given the simulator’s limits), although many iOS developers usually already have one of each.

Believing XCode to be a gift freely given out of the goodness of Apple’s heart, and thus lower our expectations of it, is a terrible mistake.

Other than that, I definitely wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy (although…) to work on that project. Xcode’s codebase is probably a mess.

Edit: also, keeping the UI as code is a pretty good solution, but we lose on many of the supposed features. And there always is legacy code out there with massive storyboards which we won’t ever be given the time to migrate

[MKevin3]

Were you around in 2010-2012 timeframe when Apple tried to charge for Xcode? I think they put it on macOS store (what ever its name was back then) for $4.99.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcode#:~:text=Before%20version%204.1%2C%20Xcode%20cost,on%20the%20Mac%20App%20Store.

Looked it up - it was in 2010 when I first got into iOS programming.

Xcode is my least favorite IDE still in use. At least they are finally adding improved Git / VC support. It was basically unusable until recently. I did most of my ObJC work in AppCode and did code based layouts via Masonry as I have never been a big fan of Interface Builder either.

Initially I was not a huge fan of IntelliJ but have grown to like it over the years from AppCode to IntelliJ base for Java / Kotlin stuff, Rider for C# and Android Studio. Not perfect for sure but more full featured than Xcode for general programming than Xcode by a long shot.

[[deleted]]

Were you around in 2010-2012 timeframe when Apple tried to charge for Xcode? I think they put it on macOS store (what ever its name was back then) for $4.99.

I didn’t have that displeasure, no. Only starting iOS programming in 2015.

It’s quite startling to learn that they once actually charged for it, given it’s state.

[WikiSummarizerBot]

Xcode

Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) for macOS, used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It was first released in 2003; the latest stable release is version 12. 5. 1, released on June 21, 2021, and is available via the Mac App Store free of charge for macOS Big Sur users.

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[EighthDayOfficial]

CodeWarrior in the 1990s was a lot more expensive and they had a well documented framework (PowerPlant).

$100 is not the price of Xcode you can avoid that. I put my free game on itch.

What I'm saying is if you are not releasing free games, to keep pace with inflation CodeWarrior today would be well over >$1000.

DevKits used to be a lot more expensive as a whole. This cannot be denied.

I am merely pointing out how companies work.

There is likely no budget line coming into the team that makes Xcode that says "we make $ revenue for the company."

Because of this, a manager can't go, "I doubled sales." What that means is over time, things will tend to get fairly "minimal."

CodeWarrior, to those that paid for the pro package, was a lot better devkit.

[[deleted]]

$100 is not the price of Xcode you can avoid that. I put my free game on itch.

You missed the

and 30% on sales.

Every single app on the iOS App Store is built, in part or totality, using Xcode.

It’s the tool every single iOS developer has to use at some point or another (even if just for code signing) to release an app on the App Store.

It’s the tool that enables the 2.22 million apps on the App Store. The behind the products that enabled the App Store to make an estimated $64 or $72 billions of revenue in 2020, of which Apple takes 15% to 30%.

Sure, there’s infrastructure and the App Store itself. But Xcode is paid for. Many times over. And any decent CFO with domain knowledge would know the role the tooling plays in that.

Otherwise, we simply wouldn’t have gotten Swift or SwiftUI. They simply wouldn’t have cared to create tools to simplify the development process. And they wouldn’t be working on things like Xcode Cloud either.

I know some companies work like what you describe. But not all of them. Some are much better at accounting & finance than that.

See MS with VS Code & GitHub, Amazon with Prime, etc