This. And this was a problem with MS/Windows development for years, too, over-reliance on Visual Studio... In fact, XCode reminds me a lot of older versions of Visual Studio, complete with terrible giant configuration dialogs, generated code galore, and subpar refactoring and external tooling support.
I really don't get Mac/iOS developer's weird stockholm syndrome with XCode -- when I worked doing iOS for a period of time, I used JetBrain's AppCode and it helped take the edge off things.
Granted, I haven't ventured into XCode & iOS dev since Swift came on the scene. That does look to have improved things.
I've worked with Xcode since it was Project Builder. And I worked with Visual C++ from the days when it was two disparate versions, one 16-bit and one 32-bit.
I used to love Visual Studio. Not MFC and its crap-heap of hokey macros, but the IDE. Project Builder was primitive as hell by comparison.
Fast-forward 20 years, and Visual Studio is still plagued by the same ridiculous UI defects it suffered from in the '90s, and Xcode is vastly improved from Project Builder.
I've heard (and evidence bears it out) that there's no one left at Apple who understands how Xcode works at this point. The giant piles of settings, many of which are specified in multiple places in multiple ways, and the corruptibility of the project files... once your project goes wrong there's often no coming back. Granted, this is far less frequent than it used to be, but still... this thing needs a ground-up rewrite behind the scenes.
I work in Xcode daily, and I would be open to trying something else if I thought it would fully integrate all of the non-coding BS that encrusts development. Specifically things like code-signing, certificates, SDK locations, simulator integration... Do third-party IDEs offer seamless support for all that stuff?
Thanks. That's why I haven't bothered to explore anything like that. It's enough of a PITA in Apple's own tools, without troubleshooting third-party hacks.
On the other hand, I did a desktop project in Qt and was shocked at how decently it generated and built an Xcode project. I did have to write a script to sign and package the app for distribution, but it wasn't as painful as plain-old iPhone development used to be simply because of the wildly unreliable certificate BS in Xcode.
Yeah some developers can't be bothered to use productive tools, there is nothing like being able to light up fire with bones and sticks, feel in control of the universe. /s
How was what I posted an anti-IDE rant when I spoke clearly about using AppCode?
The problem with XCode isn't that it's an IDE. It's that it's a shitty one, and Apple keeps trying to shove it on people by coupling the dev experience with their own IDE.
The right thing for platform makers to do is provide tools and infrastructure which can be used in a modular fashion by an ecosystem of third party tools. Offering their own IDE is fine, too, but it should not be required. This is best for the long term health of the platform, and best for developers, too.
He did not do it again. He complained that Apple tied development to ITS OWN IDE, hampering people from using OTHER IDEs.
And he is correct. The problem is that Apple's development environment is such a pile of poorly-understood spaghetti and band-aided shit that I don't think anyone at Apple has the chops (or certainly the time) to clean it up.
"The right thing for platform makers to do is provide tools and infrastructure which can be used in a modular fashion by an ecosystem of third party tools."
I'd dare to say that I have a decent experience with server-side swift using vapor at this point, shipping few production apps. I'd historically always use Xcode, but decided to try to give using Visual Studio Code with that swift extension a shot.
It's been fine, but not an order of magnitude better than using Xcode. Having copilot is nice, but the auto completion is somehow worse than Xcode from my experience so far. And the list goes on, some things are better in vscode, some in Xcode. I might eventually switch back to just using Xcode.
That Package.swift file is the build configuration file. No Xcode required. It describes how to build your program, like a Makefile. Plus, the file is itself a Swift program, where the PackageDescription API serves as a kind of domain-specific language for declaratively describing your dependencies, etc: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/packagedescription
There's no reason to be glib. If patients' brains can reconfigure following trauma such as strokes [1] or having our entire visual field flipped [2] there's no reason to assume one couldn't reroute around having nerves hooked up differently.
Can speak from personal experience. Traumatic incident which severed the nerves to my leg in multiple places. Nerves eventually regrew and reconnected within the leg, and then again where they were severed in the foot.
Motor and senory nerves reacted differently.
When motor nerves reconnected, I still couldn't contract the muscles and went through a series of steps to relearn how to use the limb. First I was trying to "move" the leg, but effectively the "IP address" for the leg was changed so my "move" signals were going to where my head thought the leg was instead of to the new connection. Instead, I would estim a specific muscle and "listen" in my head for where "noise" was coming from. That "noise" was the electric buzzing from the estim'd muscle contraction. Eventually, I learned how to concentrate to make a muscle contract, and many steps later (pun intended), I learned to walk again.
Sensory nerves didn't need a push signal, they're like a constant inbound feed when connected. When the sensory nerves reconnected, it is something you definitely notice. Going about your day, and suddenly you feel an jolt, like being shocked, and over the next few hours to days the area that is reconnecting is burning, stinging, feels like it is being crushed by pressure, and cold all at the same time. It was much more intense than when your arm falls asleep. The sensation can be maddening but it eventually passes as your body begins to sort and acclimate the signals.
All of these steps on calibrating the sensory nerves and learning how to contract and coordinate muscles is something we take for granted as people usually sort it out when they're infants.
I've had exactly these experiences following a spinal injury -- fracture of a vertebra but with minimal cord damage and quite a lot of disruption to the dorsal root ganglia.
You can't put into words how weird it is to fall over because your brain thinks your foot is somewhere it isn't. Or how suddenly you become incredibly aware of how the front of your calf feels. Or how overjoyed you are to be able to move your toes again for the first time in a year. It's not like what you see on the movies.
Wallerian degeneration -- yes, degeneration -- is part of the healing process of some grades of nerve injury. Things literally get worse before they get better, as the fragment left of the crushed axon degenerates to its root and then regrows. It's incredibly slow -- around 1mm/day at most -- and a matter of probabilities. What's also worth mentioning is that there are plenty of internal nerves too, where restoring function after a trauma would be life-changing -- like the Vegas nerve, which buggers up lots of things if damaged slightly, or, in my case, some of the nerves in the fundus and neck of the bladder, meaning that my toileting is really very different than it was before.
I'm glad you're doing better, and hope you continue to do so. I've no idea if the device the article is talking about will ever help, but nerve injuries cause so much disability worldwide I'm glad they're continuing to be worked on.
This and the parent comment really should be at the top of this page. They are the best descriptions of how this sort of thing works in practice I have encountered. And while they tell how difficult and slow it all is I feel that they could give hope to others that some sort of recovery can be possible even without new advances in treatment.
Amazed congratulations to you and parent. I can't imagine going through that, but then I imagine you wouldn't have chosen to either. Hope things continue improving.
Your description also made me reflect on infants, and whether we effectively "feel more" in that stage, as our nervous systems are self-calibrating and adjusting gain.
Did you use any medication to help nerves regrow, like Lion's Mane or something like that? We have plenty of injured soldier here, in Ukraine. I'm looking for something cheap and effective to help them recover from injuries.
Reminds me of the idea of a "tipping point." When we hit this point, words can really get people moving. This has been true for big changes like revolutions and movements, like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, or Fridays for Future.
Words might not do much without the right situation, like the parent mentioned with Rodeo Drive and Nanterre. But they're still important. They can guide people's anger and unhappiness.
In the case of Weimar Germany, the severe economic instability and social discontent following World War I created a fertile ground for radical ideologies to take root. When these conditions coincided with persuasive rhetoric, it catalyzed significant societal change. So, while words can indeed be powerful, they're often most effective when spoken into pre-existing circumstances of tension or dissatisfaction. They can then direct this latent energy towards a specific course of action or change.
It poses a deliberately vague question to provoke controversy where none exists.
Everyone agrees that the car is forbidden, the police and ambulance are technically forbidden but should be allowed, and all other cases are things that the sign obviously doesn't forbid.
If you argue otherwise you are just trying to come up with arguments for the sake of arguing.
Exactly... looks like most people don't know that Flutter uses Skia... and it's a real multi-platform framework (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS, even Web), whether you like it or not.
