I've been using Xcode for the past several years, I want to leave a comment that this is a great product. Although I am not sayting that the IDE itself and the graphical whatever editing tricks are great. I focus more on the frameworks, libraries, supprt, tools and the integrated package that tranforms a mac to a development machine, and Apple has consistently been great at supporting the development on OS X (macOS). The suggestion might be to provide an integrated end-to-end pakcage that becomes the ultimate development environment so I won't have to install 3rd party packaging systems, library systems, extra-IDEs for different languages, and dozens of emulation, environment, and differnet packages and dependencies for differnet tasks. Putting everything in Xocde seems a bad idea to increase the size (and responsiveness) of the software but it is much better than the overhead of doing fancy stuff and launching dozens of programs just to start working (which takes up lots of concurrency resources which a dual-core laptop I am using might not be the best choice).

There are a few things I don't like about Xcode, but as a whole, it is the best totally free option for iOS development. Better yet, it is totally native. I am an amateur developer, and I have really enjoyed working on Xcode. I recommend giving it a try. The documentation is great and there are a lot of really helpful support videos from non-Apple supported persons, just trying to lend a hand. I started, knowing nothing about Xcode or Swift, and punched out my first iOS app in less than a month. I was extremely nervous, having all my programmer friends telling me that apple was really strict when reviewing applications. I took the precautions of reading through the Apple documentation before hand, shockingly, my first application went through without a hitch and was on the App Store within 48 hours of submission. I will admit to using an online class to learn the basics, it was very helpful in getting me familiar with the Xcode environment. I can't provide specifics since I don't know how Apple will feel about promoting someone else's work on a review.

If you have 128GB of internal storage it can be very difficult to manage all of that space. There is no way to only install the features you need, as it comes with absolutely everything except iOS simulator images (those download separately). As a result, you either have to store Xcode on an external storage device or live life on the edge. Otherwise this is a truly delightful and complete IDE. Easily worth 5 stars despite its hardware requirements.UPDATE:It's gotten even better since Apple Silicon came out. If you're the impatient type you'll love the new Xcode because everything compiles instantly. It takes milliseconds to compile just about anything. We already know their new desktop processors have groundbreaking performance, but it really shows in Xcode. SwiftUI previews take mere milliseconds to build your whole project and produce a preview. And when you run the simulator it instantly loads your app. It's totally surreal how fast it is to develop software with Xcode.

XCode is getting better and better, and overall, it does its job pretty darned well. I can pick on a couple of very specific things that do kind of get in my way during normal workflow, but nothing show stopping. 1) for the love of god, please finish the transition over to full and proper tapped-doc support. It's so close to finally being there, but the whole thing where changing the doc in the explorer overwriting what's in the current tab is asinine. 2) Also, not supporting industry-standard CTRL-TAB for tab switching is similarly idiotic. 3) resetting previous-build errors and messages on application loading/startup would be awesome. It's really getting there. It is. But the small, picayune stuff that shows polish and refinement really needs attention. I'm happy to come onboard as a developer liason and help you get this thing finished up. ;)

As a developer with more that 20 years of development experience who recently switched to iOS and swift, I must admit that Xcode is not a tool Apple ecosystem deserves. Being a wonderful product itself, iPhone and iOS has established a new level of customer satisfaction that affected the whole market. Xcode looks like a tool from completely different world — a world of unsatisfaction, pain and unproductivity. A world no one who has ever tried to use IntelliJ products whould like to visit: Xcode hangs, eats CPU, stops highlighting, its unable to perform any refactoring besides rename, and even a simple rename it might fail to complete. It is a shame, Apple. A real shame. And if you are not able to provide developers with a decent tool, please, let us use something else by allowing other people to compete with you: open your formats, allow other to build tools on top of your toolchain, that's not that hard and I'm sure it will cause some significant positive changes for everyone, including your own developers, your own tools and your own ecosystem.

TLDR; Xcode needs a redesign, but it's still awesome either way.Xcode is amazing. From the day Steve Jobs announced it, when the iPhone SDK came out, and to now. It's great. But being a *very* old app, it does have it's flaws. And since I use it so much everyday, here's what's wrong: The interface. Xcode's UX has stayed the same for so long, and it desperately needs a rewrite. The preview section looks brand new (because it is,) while the navigator looks like it came out in 2003 (Because it did.) I can tell that most of Xcode is made in AppKit, and some of it is in SwiftUI. Xcode's story is the Mac's story. Mac OS X (Technically still the name) is a Frankenstein of the Darwin project, XNU, BSD, UNIX, and NEXTStep. Xcode is a Frankenstein of *tons* of different interfaces. Cocoa, SwiftUI, AppKit, knowing Apple they probably put some random UIKit port specific to Xcode in there. The point is, Xcode needs to be rewritten, just like Mac OS was.

It works more or less as expected and you can type in it. That's pretty much where the pros end. There are two main problems that I have with this application. First off is the file size. It's insanely large for a program that can easily be replaced by text edit or notepad. It's almost 7GB and is the 4th largest application on my system - larger than most games. The other problem is the constant updating and the way they work. Updating is great for most things. However, this program automatically updates at the worst times and it usually takes forever to do so. Like I can be on my MacBook for hours, but if I go to use Xcode suddenly it has to update and can't be used while updating. If my MacBook has been sitting around for days with automatic updates on the whole time, still needs to update or is in the process of updating when I try to use it. So if I updated earlier that day then used it and need to go back to it 2 hours later? Yep, still a 50% chance or so that it's going to have to update first or it's already in the midst of updating and can't be used. Not only this, but even when I'm not using or trying to use Xcode, and I'm in the middle of doing something else, it takes the liberty of letting me know that Xcode is being updated and can't be used while it's being updated.I give it 2 stars only because it works fine when you can actually get it to open and don't have to do the perpetual update song and dance.

For swift, which I am assuming most people use it for, it's, not bad. The IDE its self has been around for a while, and I do think they could have done a better job with it over the last two decades its been around. But I dont believe it gained traction until swift, which is only a little older than 5 years now. Since then both have gotten major improvments. Sometimes I get a error message completly unrelated or misleading. And debugging can be a hastle a lot of the time. But Apple is focused on being the best. And the support they are giving both Xcode and swift is showing. While sure some of the issues with the IDE can be annoying it 100% helps me become a better swift developer, and helps me understand xcode better. So if you are hesitant right now, I can say confidently in 5-10 years from now you will be wishing you didnt have to catch up.

I'm not going to comment on the usefullness of Xcode itself, because honetly, I've never used it. The reason for my low score is strictly down to the package size and the fact that it's a required dependency for Flutter developemnt on Mac. Now, I can understand the need for some of the underpinnings related to the simulator and all, but those binaries can't possibly account for the roughly 12GB that Xcode takes up. I'd really like to see the creation of a separate pakage, containing just the required parts for the simulator to run. It would really reduce the headache of having to install and then continuously update a package that I'm literally only using a portion of. To be honest, since Xcode does support several other languages that I work in, I will do my due dilligence and test out the support for those, so I can maybe leave a morefavorable review. I just wish there was a way to isolate just the features I (or anyone else) needs, in order to cut down on the unneccesary bloat.

FIX YOUR LEAKS!!!! XCode is writing absurd amounts of data to temp storgage and is not clearing it out and and have gone from 200gigs of free spaces on my machine to 74 gigis, and it was 84gigs an hour ago. This machine was litterly just purchased because this same issue was occroring on my old machine making XCode unusable. You have force me to spend $2500 on a machine that didnt need to be upgrade and was only running like crap because you have left this issue unfixed for over a month now. None of the reports on the forums list this as fixed in the newest beta either. Either fix it, or you will be buying me a computer, and also be held responsible, for any downtime I incurr from your truly distasterous releease. Im not sure you could have made this any worse of a release that this. And the truly ludacris size that XCode installers is at this point is going to make developing apps for your platform near impossible in future as the installation size is out of control even without problem I am seeing. FIX THIS NOW!!!

I’ve been using Xcode since 2002. It’s sad to see how the app has stagnated. Things that have been bad or broken from the beginning times of the app store, like device provisioning, have been made better but still far from good. I can’t provision my Apple Watch no matter that I try. The build settings are still a disaster. Yes they have added a bunch of nice GUI on top of entitlements. However, try to figure out why the API doesn’t work with your current device. File handling still doesn’t make much sense. Folders can be real or not, in several ways and those details mater since, they effect how things are compiled. Don’t get me started on Swift dependencies. XCode is trying to do too many things and serve to many different needs, and fails at most of them. Trying to get any thing fixed by filing a Radar is incredibly frustrating. It’s just a black hole. Unless you join the company and look up the Radar from inside any find it duped with 107 others and makers “will not fix”.

I downloaded Xcode (8.2.1 for old mac) recently, and it worked very well. Nice user interface, easy to learn. However, after using it for a week or two, I start getting this error telling me I can’t create more than 10 App IDs in a week. I have created maybe ten test apps, but it has been over a week since I created all of them. I am not ready to start paying $100/month to get rid of this error. This limit/error is very frustrating, and I would have given it five stars otherwise. I think this limit may cause unfinished/not ready apps to enter the app store, as newer developers may pay just to get rid of this error, and then are able to add there unfinished apps to the App Store. Or, they may create extra Apple IDs, and that is less than desirable. Please, remove this limit!