When AppCode has an internal exception in the IDE, it’s very well contained and there’s a built-in mechanism that reports its to JetBrains if you want. Number of crash I got since the beginning of this year? One. Performance-wise, and it really surprised me, it’s nothing like the typical Java app you’ve been used to. Navigating your code is as fast or faster than in Xcode.Indeed, AppCode capitalizes on 10 years of IDE engineering by JetBrains and this shows. It initially found issues with my code that no other tool found, and this immediately gave AppCode credit in my mind. Not the fantastic refactoring, but the Code Inspections. I got to use AppCode because of one feature. But, think about it, is there anything like a typical Mac app nowadays? So the first thing if you really want to think different is, get past the initial rejection for non-Mac look. I used to be this type – Dismissing applications on the way they don’t look like typical Mac apps, don’t feel like typical Mac apps. Your blog post interestingly synthesizes the fears of many hardcore Cocoa developers who view anything non-Cocoa as evil. $99, but a 30-day trial period, which is smart. Still requires Xcode to be installed, because it uses the Xcode command line tool xcodebuild to build.Ģ. It’s ironic that I would say this for a platform whose motto once was “Think Different”, but there you go.īut if I start now, at least I’ll have something to talk about for the podcast next week!ġ. My final concern is that, even if I get everything working properly, even if my productivity skyrockets, I’m still going to be off doing something different than 99.9% of the Cocoa engineers out there. Xcode itself it full of weird bugs expecting AppCode to be perfect is holding it to a different standard.īut I’d rather not have bugs on top of my bugs. Does AppCode have to do double the work to get the same result? Or does it try to parse the source code in its own, not-quite-matching way, leading to weird inconsistencies? Will builds be as fast? Will there be cryptic errors when I try something nobody thought of to integrate properly? Can I really trust it to edit project and workspace files (whose formats are undocumented)? Clang is now deeply integrated into Xcode, including its index and its code editor. Much of the reason Xcode used to be so bad was that it couldn’t link against gcc directly. I won’t be trying it with any massive projects, so that’s good (might work better) and bad (won’t be able to judge how it handles them). On the other hand, Xcode itself can be slow and laggy at times, so it will be interesting to see where AppCode lands in comparison. The Java runtime on the Mac was never known for its speed. If the UI doesn’t do the trick, speed issues might. So there may also be UI behaviors that feel alien and throw me off. (One thing that Xcode has going for it now is that at least it looks good.) I’m assuming AppCode, like their Java IDE IntelliJ IDEA, is written in Java, not native Objective-C, and that’s why it doesn’t use standard controls its UI drawing is meant to be cross-platform. While the screenshot on their promo page doesn’t look that bad, I wonder if I won’t be able to stand their non-native UI. And by “dealbreaker” I mean, something I have to go back to Xcode for often enough that I might as well just keep using Xcode. I suspect there will be at least one dealbreaker in this category. I already know you can’t edit xibs in it, though their promo page claims that refactoring will work in xibs and storyboards, which would be impressive. My guess is that AppCode won’t support a lot of the things that are built in to Xcode, from minor editing conveniences to essential features. GnuStep, anyone? Mono? Every new version is a chance for things to break, every new feature is something else to fall behind on. The trouble with any company attempting to insert itself in another company’s value chain is that they’re playing a constant, unsuccessful game of catchup. I’m planning on trying it 2, but before I do, I figured I’d lay down some “claim chowder” explaining my doubts. When I complain about this or that inadequacy in Xcode, there’s always a small but persistent chorus singing the praises of JetBrains’s Cocoa IDE AppCode.
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