Monday May 09, 2011

Xcode is to Internet Explorer as...

Graham Lee wrote up a great review of appCode, a new IDE from JetBrains that wants to be an Xcode alternative for iOS/OS X development.

Xcode is to 2010s Objective-C IDEs as Internet Explorer was to 1990s browsers: it basically works, and you don’t get a choice of what you use so be thankful for whatever features you get from On High.

It’d be great for someone to come along with the Firefox of Objective-C IDEs: a product that reminds users and vendors alike that there’s more than one way to do an IDE and that people are open to trying the other ways.

An interesting historical comparison. I like the idea of putting this kind of pressure on Xcode. I’m not too keen on appCode because of it’s IntelliJ IDEA lineage, but its features do have my attention. It beats Xcode’s refactoring tools without breaking a sweat. I’d love to see it synchronize the project file tree with the file system. It’s an early preview so there could be some interesting potential here.

If the vim emulator for IDEA works in appCode then they’d have me. :)