You know the drill. A new version of some popular piece of software is released, and no matter how good it is reactions are going to be mixed. Somehow, somewhere out there will be at least one person who absolutely hates the new version for the tiniest and/or most ridiculous reason – and insists that he shares his feelings with everyone else.
Today that person is me, and this is the story of why I hate Xcode 4.
As you know, Apple recently released the latest and greatest version of its software development app – Xcode. Being a bit of an Apple software developer, I dutifully installed it and prepared myself to be amazed. No such luck. You see, I happen to use Xcode as a general purpose programming text editor, which for me mostly means a lot of random Perl files. Xcode has always been fast, and done and a perfectly lovely job of syntax coloring for me. I had my default window size set to exactly half the width of the screen, meaning I could have two text documents open side-by-side on my Macbook Pro, kind of like this:
Xcode 4 no longer remembers window sizes. So every single time I open a text file, it looks like this:
If I want two windows open side-by-side, I’m forced to manually resize them each and every time. AUGH!
Time to start looking into alternative text editors (TextMate?) and/or window management solutions (Divvy?)…
5 Comments
i hate XCode 4 as well, BECAUSE, in my case, it always opens the text windows in a small size, and i want all of them to be full screen
i wish i had your settings 
i use and love BBEdit and TextMate, both are awesome, i use them to edit XML. i edit my C++ code in XCode.
try textwrangler first, it’s the free version of BBEdit.
BBEdit is the most complete text editor, it’s one of the best applications ever
but it can be overkill, TextMate is a bit more elegant, i like the tabbed interface, and it had “Projects” before BBEdit. (a way to regroup the files you use)
if you want to edit files over FTP BBedit is a must have.
i would get both.
Crazy! Apparently there is a hidden preference in there that specifies insane window management. I keep opening up files hoping one day they are going to magically have the correct window size…
I write Mac and iOS apps. I just got a new machine, installed Lion, and moved to Xcode 4 and I am miserable. Apple changed lots of stuff that I have been using for years and have muscle memory – for NO GOOD REASON.
Want to toggle between header and source file? It used to be Command+Option+Up Arrow. Now for no apparent reason its Command+Control+Up Arrow. This is just the beginning. How do I use Interface builder in Xcode 4? I have no idea. How do I find a file quickly in the group tree if I know its name – in Xcode 3, I could just type its name in the search box on the toolbar and quickly find it – but that’s missing in Xcode 4.
I’ve been using Xcode as a general purpose programming editor for years, and
the loss of simple things like the current line:column number at the top of the page
after the current file drives me right up the wall when I am trying to align things
on particular columns. Also, the replacement of the simple and elegant one-click
way of splitting windows, either horizontally or vertically , in Xcode 3 with the
“assistant editor” concept in Xcode 4 drives me crazy.
There are two types of developer. One writes code to SELL, and the other writes code to USE. The XCode team is comprised of the former. Usability is not a goal.