Buggy Xtrash

It is a constant wrestling match with the environment from editor to debugger. Bugged-up Bloatware. And because it is free, Apple has crushed the market for solid competition of any decent caliber.

- text wraps in the editor making it confusing to read yet necessary because of Apple’s unformatted header documentation … And ironically text does not wrap in debug variables section so you can’t see all of the text in Apple’s built-in exception strings without a 30” monitor.

- debug variables nearly useless as they show little or nothing of cocoa object internals much of the time. View memory function frequently does not and requires hand jamming like variable display. Cant even open a variable in a separate window for debug change analysis work.

- built for a microsoft 1-window-world, acts like a browwer rather than a document editor so you forever fight to maintain context with multiple “document” window locations in your workspace. In fact, due to random changes of Window contents based upon opening Finder documents, the concept of “workspace” is more slipery than teflon against teflon. In the bright side, no need to buy large Apple monitors just to get a bigger 1-window-xworld.

- Auto-formatting (Auto-ugly) that cannot be reasonably modified and ironically flys in the face of the original (and extrememly well concieved) Apple C++ Style Guide.

Sure, it has some really great editor features like the ablity to augment the failings of Xcode with plug-ins… But at the end of the day, the original IDEs like CodeWarror and MPW still provided critical functionality that Xcode doesn’t come near. So just don’t use it right? Read the first sentence of this review...

Xcode is only free if your time is worth nothing.

Wm. about Xcode