Gary LO
Gary LO
Aug 26, 2017 · 2 min read

I am commenting on “the experience of writing Swift in iOS & Kotlin in Android ”.

Besides, I agree that some parts of Xcode really do a good job and better than Android Studio. But some “development related”of Xcode have big room of improvements.

Here is the list:

  • Xcode has a very tight MacOS supported(i.e. Xcode 8.3 required MacOS 10.11.6+)
  • Xcode Interface Builder generate unreadable codes (Nearly impossible to work with others on the same UI. Codes are not Mergeable )
  • Xcode Interface Builder would make a file change automatically when you preview a .xib or .storyboard
  • Xcode has NO compile time checking on its @IBOutlet. Removing or changing UI in Interface Builder is error prone (Android Studio with Kotlin Extension do have compile time checking on UI)
  • Xcode’s Dependency Management is a disaster. Cocapod and Carthage are very popular but both of them are unofficial. Believe or not, you are easily get frustrated and take you a hour to resolve one of your broken dependencies when upgrading Swift. (Hope that Swift Dependency Management will become popular later. Android Studio is just a Gradle)
  • Xcode project structure is managed by a single & huge Project file but NOT “Intuitively By Folder”. (Merge Conflict on .project frequently)
  • Xcode’s “Safari like” approach. No Horizontally Split, No Vertically Split. Even you got a big screen, Xcode has done nothing to help you boost productivity.
  • Xcode Editor inspection not accurate. for example, making a public method M in AKit, if you use M in BKit, editor will show the red error unless you trigger a compile. (Glad that it has been rewritten in Xcode 9. Let see!!)
  • Xcode has no official console log level color.

If you are intensively using Xcode and Android Studio to build a product, I think you will experience the same complaints.

Seriously, I don’t use Xcode but AppCode to doing development(Coding) now.

Also ZERO .xib and .storyboard are used in our iOS project (I would share how to achieve and what is the benefit of this approach on Medium later).

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Gary LO

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Gary LO

Developer ❤ Hong Kong