The Part of Xcode 4 That Tires Me Out
[T]he only thing worse than managing multiple windows is managing multiple panes.
Yep.
Update (2011-09-05): Gus Mueller:
And I really miss having Interface Builder as a separate application. What ever happened to the philosophy of “small sharp tools”?
4 Comments RSS · Twitter
The FCPX mentality invades all new Cupertino software. Devs aren't immune from the syndrome.
As Dear Departed Leader was fond of saying, folks like Brent who prefer 'pro' workflows will die out, after all. "No compromises" in the brave new world.
IMHO, Xcode 4 (and before that Interface Builder 3) are productivity killers.
They make perfect sense from a technical point of view (*). They don't make any from a usability point of view.
When Mac OS X/Rhapsody was being sold to Mac OS developers, the example that was always shown was how easy it is to make a Text Editor without a single line of code.
Sure, you can still do it with Xcode 4. But if you check how much time is needed to build it with Xcode 4 vs Project Builder X, Xcode 4 will look like an awkward snail.
(*) One of the make-technical-sense changes in IB 3 was the new inspector with the properties of the class, super class, super super class, … being displayed in sub panes. I assume this was done among other things to make it easier to build an IB inspector for a new subclass. And now, custom IB inspectors are AWOL in Xcode 4. WTF?!
@Bob I think Interface Builder 3 was a big improvement over 2.x, overall. But it does seem like they were getting ready to make it easier to build IB palettes for custom classes, only to change direction entirely.
I don’t really understand the motivation for combining it with Xcode. Sure, dragging connections to code is nifty, but it makes the interface so cluttered.
[…] these years later, I still miss Xcode 3’s multi-window interface. I’ve gotten used to living without it, […]
