I know Xcode might struggle every now and then with some of the things you're talking about and I'm not saying that I don't have any feedback for Apple, but Xcode is one of the most powerful and well designed development and instrumentation environments I've ever used.
I can't say you hear a lot of folks on other OSes with other IDEs saying "I wish I had Xcode". There was a minute when MonoDevelop was trying to emulate Xcode but that must be over a decade ago.
How many of those people who spend their time using other IDEs on other OSs (where Xcode doesn't run) spend any amount of time using Xcode and therefore have the requisite experience to be able to know that it's generally excellent?
And when you say "you hear", you really mean "you", not "me". I hear it a lot.
I mostly work in games where Xcode is an all too common chore to pick up from time to time because Apple changed the rules on something or other to get an iOS build out. Usually I find that xcode isn't helpful at all in solving these problems. You need to dig through guis because it will not just trivially point you to the text file like VS or Jetbrains would.
It's certainly not a pleasant treat to pick the short straw.
Beyond that, I work with plenty of folks who have dabbled in xcode for mobile or on the side and it's just not seen in that great a light.
Meanwhile, I find that people who love xcode are all in and don't really give alternatives a chance at all (because when you have to use xcode, there isn't an alternative).
Even in this comment chain, we're rejecting other's opinions outright instead of talking about killer features xcode has that others fail at.
Hasn't everybody at least tried everything significant just because? Even the most non-apple developer must have at least checked it out on a friends laptop or something just to be informed of the state of their own business.
If there are developers who are that incurious, all I can say is I don't understand them.
> Hasn't everybody at least tried everything significant just because?
No, not in the slightest. I would call this one the most dangerous and unfortunate fallacies that so many intelligent people have ever accepted and been cheated by. If it were true, you'd know everything important there is to know, and be a master of philosophy, and would have many answers to some basic questions which most people have been told have no good or concrete or verifiable answers.
Personally speaking I don’t get the hubbub around Jetbrains and MS IDEs. Like they’re not bad by any means but they have their own sets of idiosyncrasies and bugs… it just depends on which set you happen to run up against most often in your day to day.
What version did you use? What errors did you see? Don't get me wrong, I've spent 20 years with it, and there was a learning curve - but isn't that the case with many good tools? Again, don't get me wrong, I have some feedback for Apple, and there's a reason why we affectionately call it a harsh mistress. But that doesn't mean it's somehow not one of the best designed, best functioning, and most powerful suites for programming with certain other incidentally very well engineered SDKs etc. And yes, things may have gone downhill a little bit, especially at the scale they're at now. If we could talk about Xcode of, say, 2014, it'd be a less ambiguous conversation.
