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Comment by Tloewald | Hacker News Reader

Installing xcode is staggeringly more pleasant than installing eclipse in my experience. The developer certificate song and dance is a total pain in the butt, but note that you can test and build your hello world for iOS without a device at all, no hoops to jump, and it works really well.

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     Installing xcode is staggeringly more pleasant
     than installing eclipse in my experience

People saying that don't really know what they are talking about. Installing Eclipse involves these steps:

1) install Java, which on my Ubuntu is just "sudo aptitude install openjdk-6-jdk" and that's it

2) download an archive from Eclipse.org and unzip it somewhere

3) there is no step 3

Installing the Android plugin is equally easy. Then there's always IntelliJ IDEA which is probably the best IDE and comes with Android integration built in. The community version was recently open-sourced too.

XCode : open the app store, search xcode, click install. Done.

After you registered on the app store, which requires giving them name, sex, email, address, phone number and going through the account validation email and "password must contain X special characters and you need six different security questions" hoops.

Last time I checked, Java SDK or Eclipse didn't want my A/S/L.

If you just bought a Mac in order to develop for iPhone then yes, you need to create an Apple ID and jump through all the hoops. Like if I wanted to run that aptitude command I would have to download, install Ubuntu and learn unix first.

But if you already are a mac user then you already have an Apple ID. It is absurd to say that you need it to download Xcode.

Eclipse: open Ubuntu Software Centre, search eclipse, click install. Done.

Really? The App Store makes Xcode installs fairly easy (though upgrading from pre-App Store Xcode breaks things in my experience), but what could be simpler than downloading Eclipse's zip, and then unzipping it?

Or do you mean it's a pain setting up the Android SDK within Eclipse? This could certainly be more stream lined (though I think it's fairly simple to setup as well).

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