>I've always considered Xcode to be the nicest IDE to use in terms of user interface, though it wasn't exactly pretty. It's just the competition was so ugly and cluttered. I've often likened saying Xcode 3 was the prettiest IDE to saying that it was the nicest smelling dog crap. Xcode 4 however, genuinely is pretty. I love looking at it and admiring the amount of work that has gone into it. Apple has had some of the prettiest developer tools in terms of Interface Builder, Instruments, Quartz Composer etc for quite a while, but Xcode was dated. It now feels like the sort of user interface you'd expect from Apple.

Looking at the screenshots, I don't see how it's prettier than, say Visual Studio 2010. Maybe it's subjective? Xcode from the article:

http://fireballed.org/linked/2011/03/09/xcode-pilkington/xco...

Visual Studio:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/wordpress/wp-content/u...