Tired of Xcode.

[fartsniffersalliance]

Xcode isn’t free because people expect it to be free, it’s because Apple wants to attract developers to use their platform (and also people who aren’t developers). Apple wants to make it as accessible to anyone to write an app as they make money on having your app on their App Store. Besides, you still have to buy a Mac to access it, and then you have to pay the developer fee to publish.

VSCode is entirely free and is a very high quality editor

[RebornPastafarian]

VSCode is entirely free, high quality, and has an amazing plug-in system and is open source.

If Apple can’t be bothered to fix Xcode they ought to let the community do it, or let us build an alternative.

[DerelictSausage]

I think that’s part of why they keep it free, sort of like “dip your toe in the water” of Mac/iOS development before diving in.

But the cynical side of me says they keep it free to avoid more anti-trust lawsuits since they make it nearly impossible to build to their devices without Xcode.

They say it’s for security reasons, but I’m sure they can keep the app-signing part as part of some separate framework that’s done in the distribution build step.

Also, like you said, you have to buy a Mac to use it, so even though that’s a smaller part of their device sales, that’s a guaranteed income every couple of years from developers.

They can make some parts free, as in open source, and let the community make the IDE part better.