Comment by i386 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by i386 | Hacker News Reader

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I have a few disagreements with what you have said here.

AppCode is in Beta - it's going to be slow and its going to crash. Even though you have stated that "tools don't have to be pretty to be functional" I think you have contradicted your point here by writing off AppCode on that basis entirely.

As a software developer, fair criticism of a tool should never rely on its aesthetics but rather on its ability to solve problems and solve them productivity. Eclipse, Emacs, Hudson, et al are tools I wouldn't say are aesthetically pleasing but they are very successful at solving the problems they were designed to solve. Thus I believe aesthetics should logically be placed secondary to utility.

I really did want to expand on the point you disagreed with, but I had to leave. Here's a bit more.

What I meant was that given the choice between two tools, one of which is pleasant to use (for whatever reason) and one of which is not, I will always choose the one that is more pleasant to use. So far, reading and testing, I have not seen any reason to prefer appCode to Xcode. If appCode had some sort of killer feature, then I would put less emphasis on the way it looks.

In addition, this sort of interface displays a fundamental misunderstanding of OS X and iOS by Jetbrains. Integrating with an OS is about more than getting your code to run and do stuff. I am a user as much as any iPhone owner is a user.

What I meant was that given the choice between two tools, one of which is pleasant to use (for whatever reason) and one of which is not, I will always choose the one that is more pleasant to use.

This is the crux, for me. After years of becoming accustomed to the million and one tiny points of attention to detail about the development experience (as opposed to the user experience) that JetBrains are known for, this announcement is fantastic news. XCode is painful by comparison.

It's not even in beta, it's in EAP.

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