I've been using XCode for 10 years. For me, it's only improved and I don't have any real pain points. They are definitely fixing bugs. I make software for iOS, macOS, car play, and apple watch.
Sure sometimes I've got to reset or clear a cache, but this has never stopped my day.
What is so horrible about XCode?
This means you've learned to work around its shortcomings. A decade ago I used to develop in PyCharm for websites, and Visual Studio .Net for desktop apps. Then I had to learn XCode for a mobile app.
It was a surreal experience, like going back ten years in UX, while at the same time dealing with a myriad of modern but artificial limitations and breaking changes that meant the app needed frequent housekeeping even when its features remained unchanged.
For a company that gets a huge part of its revenue on its oversized App Store tax, developers, and their tooling, should be one of their highest priorities IMO. Instead, we get Kafkaesque situations like "my app doesn't compile today... oh, I need to open my Apple Developer account in the browser and accept a new little change in their kilometric EULA that I always pretend I've read carefully". Things like this could be handled better.
Edit: I also had to learn Android Studio for another app, and the experience had less friction overall, but that could mean that I've also learned to work around the shortcomings of JetBrains IDEs. Google is undeniably more developer-friendly than Apple IMO, though.
There is no perfect IDE. They all have problems / are inadequate / get in the way. I absolutely loathe IntelliJ IDEA for example, and think Eclipse is needlessly complex (though I'd like their code-indentation/formatting UI to replace the one in Xcode).
Honestly, Xcode gets a lot of bad comments, but it works pretty well for me and the debugging tools are pretty much top-notch if you take the time to learn them.
I started a project on January 5th. Running sloc right now I see:
---------- Result ------------
Physical : 44454
Source : 31019
Comment : 7284
Single-line comment : 2622
Block comment : 4662
Mixed : 210
Empty block comment : 2
Empty : 6363
To Do : 0
----------------------------
That's a lot of code in just under a month (and none of it from AI tools), I don't think the IDE is getting in my way.
Perhaps it's just the setup you (the generic "you") are used to or something. I've got 3 4k screens connected to a Mac Studio here, and plenty of space for a terminal or four to be running on-screen at the same time and in windows that don't obscure the things I want to look at. I guess if you code on an MBP and space is limited, it might be easier to switch to ? But I generally want that space for my debugger and console-app i/o. I think it'd just get in the way...
MacOS has very very slow slow window- and desktop- switching (over one FULL second to switch from one desktop to another - this is not a joke!) so having a terminal integrated into the same application is very useful for maintaining flow for users developing on a single-screen Macbook.
I just checked with a screen recording. Switching desktops takes 15 frames (250 ms). If you turn reduce motion on, it takes 13 frames (216 ms).
From a screen recording, I count 53 screen-recorded frames from the apparent start of the animation (which occurs after it's invoked) to desktop widgets becoming transparent (which appears to be the point input is no longer blocked). IINA says the video is 50.582 fps (very strange frame rate?) so that would be ~1050ms.
Of course, that doesn't include any input latency or the display latency, so I also took a video with my phone. I took two trials and I recorded a full 1.08 seconds from key depression to transparent widgets. I did two more with Reduce Motion on and got the exact same time.
I am very curious what your set up is, because I am invested in getting this as close to 8.3 ms as possible.
edit: For comparison, my Linux desktop with a similar experimental set up, this takes about 24ms from key depression to the next desktop becoming visible. The only experimental difference is that I had to switch to the "slow mo" camera to record the difference, and I have a 240hz monitor. The desktop is also considered one of the slower ones (GNOME).
TLDR: It takes 1.08 seconds, on my Macbook, to complete a desktop transition.
Not sure why yours is so much slower than mine. Mine is definitely 250 ms long or 15 frames from the time I hit the shortcut.
I used the onscreen keyboard viewer to get visual feedback when the shortcut was pressed and recorded audio so I could hear it being pressed. I even recorded it a second time using OBS to ensure I was at 60 fps and trimmed the whole segment down to just the animation and sure enough, the video is exactly 250 ms long according to IINA.
Also, I don't have any visible delay between pressing the key and the animation starting. The animation starts on the same frame as when the shortcut is recognized by the onscreen keyboard viewer (which is the same time as I hear it being pressed) in the recording. The keyboard delay must be < 16.6 ms.
There is some input display on Macbook Pros, but that'd account for easily <100ms of the difference we're seeing (I'm holding `control` and measuring from depression of the arrow key).
I tried changing screen resolution, quitting apps like Rectangle, etc. No dice.
In digging more deeply than I had before, I did find some things which were rumored to speed it up. Disabling multi-color preview, and disabling "displays have separate spaces". (I am using only one display). This shaves off some time (taking about 950ms)! (!!!)
There is also a four-finger gesture which, if done fast enough, appears to speed things up. But it's difficult to reproduce and often "overshoots" to other spaces.
I have a few questions, if you'd oblige:
- Are you also using ProMotion (120hz)? (The biggest thing I can find to speed this up is switching to 60hz, but this does not quite get to 250ms).
- Are you also switching using ctrl+arrowkey(left/right)? (Ctrl+number is notably faster, but not what I'm looking for.)
- Were you using MacOS before this M1 Pro? (This is my first MacOS machine, I'm wondering if there might be some hidden configuration carried over from a previous install with faster transitions).
When reduce motion is turned on in the control panel though, the ctrl-arrow and ctrl-# animations take the same time on my machine (216.6 ms)
I'm doing the same thing you are, holding control and measuring from when I tap the next key.
No ProMotion and only using the internal display. I was running other Macs before this, so there is a chance some configuration crossed over.