Before iOS, I was coding animation software on Linux using vim/scons for five years. So no real IDE. But not a fair comparison because we had a build team keeping everything nice. I also ported one of my apps to Windows and Visual Studio never drove me crazy. But I haven't worked with it to nearly the same depth as I have with Xcode.
So I concede that perhaps all IDEs are dreadful. I still hate Xcode.
I know pro users of Logic and Ableton and they never express such a level of displeasure. FWIW, having used Logic, Ableton, FCP, all non-professionally, those apps seem like a dream compared to Xcode.
I think it's likely that if Xcode weren't free, there would be serious competition and iOS development would be better for it. Or perhaps if Xcode were modularized so 3rd parties could use parts of it (Instruments, GPU debugger, memory graph debugger), lowering their development cost so they can compete with free.
I tried AppCode and while it seemed nice (refactoring was good in particular), I kept returning to Xcode to use the GPU debugger IIRC.
So, amusingly, I'm the inverse of your impression: the IDEs I've tried superficially I've generally enjoyed. The one I've used deeply I detest.
Thanks for sharing this! For Visual Studio, I always think of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCllU4YkxBk that pretty much just leaves the JetBrains IDEs, which are obviously well loved. I've never had a good first impression with them, so I haven't bothered to get deeper into them, but I also don't have the experience to form a fair opinion (although when I read about what folks like about JetBrains, it doesn't resonate with me, usually it's about refactoring tools, which I don't care about).
Reporting in with my experience with JetBrains IDEs - they are generally OK, but the quality has gone massively down over the last couple of years (some worse than others, Rider has been okay, though new features often just don't work at all). Quoting my own comment with some memorable new issues in WebStorm from last year, written a couple of months ago (with links to the issue tracker)[0]:
- The autocomplete popup sometimes froze the IDE completely (and killing the process caused minutes of data loss), open for close to a year
- Since two months ago, the Typescript language server fails to start in Vue projects (due to a broken update by the Vue team). A fixed version of WebStorm was released yesterday, in the meantime you were apparently expected to search for the error message, stumble upon the YouTrack page, and apply a workaround
- Performance is abysmal in a larger React MUI project, think 10-15 seconds for feedback on code changes, sometimes errors just stick around for a good minute or more
- In some situations WebStorm makes autocomplete suggestions that aren't allowed - think effectively a type T with keys K | L, where Omit<T, K> leads to only suggesting K properties, while removing the Omit makes it suggest both K and L properties
- After updating from 2024.1.X to 2024.2.Y, the window had no buttons for minimizing/maximizing anymore. Now, this was partially caused by my environment, but after I found a workaround it was closed as "Third Party Problem". Still feels like a regression to me, since my environment did not change.
I've mostly stopped updating the IDE, as almost every version brings new regressions in basic editor features. This morning I updated and tried to copy some text. WebStorm showed me a "Copying..." dialogue for more than 30 seconds.
So I concede that perhaps all IDEs are dreadful. I still hate Xcode.
I know pro users of Logic and Ableton and they never express such a level of displeasure. FWIW, having used Logic, Ableton, FCP, all non-professionally, those apps seem like a dream compared to Xcode.
I think it's likely that if Xcode weren't free, there would be serious competition and iOS development would be better for it. Or perhaps if Xcode were modularized so 3rd parties could use parts of it (Instruments, GPU debugger, memory graph debugger), lowering their development cost so they can compete with free.
I tried AppCode and while it seemed nice (refactoring was good in particular), I kept returning to Xcode to use the GPU debugger IIRC.
So, amusingly, I'm the inverse of your impression: the IDEs I've tried superficially I've generally enjoyed. The one I've used deeply I detest.