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Comment by fleitz | Hacker News Reader

I can't wait for Single Window, the multi-window design was possibly the worst interface for an IDE I've seen. I was actually very surprised how bad the UX for XCode was compared to the rest of OS X.

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XCode already has a single-window mode. And as far as navigating multiple documents is concerned, it seems to work exactly the same as it does in XCode 4.

It looks from the screenshots that they are integrating interface builder into XCode and possibly (I'm hoping) the simulator as well? Even in "single-window" mode, you have to switch through multiple windows/applications in order to do development. The "build window", for instance, is unnecessary as it displays a lot of redundant information. A single window for layout, coding and debugging sounds useful to me.

A negative aspect of single window mode is if you use multiple monitors.

Or if you are handy with Expose and/or uses an external editor.

You can always still use other monitors for to-do lists, iPhone Simulator, documentation, performance tools, iTunes, etc.

Of course, I would hope that there are still options for breaking things into their own window for those who want to.

The single window way to work in xcode worked very well in my opinion but I agree that the multi way that interface builder had and xcode had by default was the worst.

A lot of that came from NeXT.

It's called Emacs, and it was released, oh... about 30 years ago.

This. I edit my files in MacVim (cocoa.vim is a lifesaver). The Xcode editor will have to be really freaking good to get me to switch from MacVim.

As someone who primarily writes code in Windows and occasionally in Xcode on the Mac, I'm grateful for the fact that I use Vim - which doesn't require using any of the modifier keys to move around and edit. Every time I'm sitting in the Xcode editor I'm constantly hitting the wrong modifier key or forgetting the key combination for delete-word-backwords or whatever.

How do you find compile errors, run the debugger, edit build settings? Do you have MacVim integrated with Xcode somehow?

Emacs has M-x compile, which also does debugger integration. You can edit the build file(s) directly, it's not that hard. I'm sure vim has the same thing.

Yes. With cocoa.vim, you can invoke Xcode's "build" and "build and run" right from MacVim. I haven't checked, but I suspect this feature uses AppleScript behind the scenes.

I just use MacVim for editing and run the Xcode project window alongside.

Is the convention of beginning a reply with "This." a Reddit meme? I'm beginning to see this more and more and it always irks me for some reason. Isn't an up-vote on the comment the correct way to say "This."?

Forgive the meta-comment, I'm just curious.

FWIW I don't think this originated on reddit, I've seen it on fark and metafilter also (although it's pretty derided on metafilter if not followed by some sort of substantive response).

Gibberish. Not your comment, I just figured I would preface my reply with a single meaningless word that added nothing to what I was about to say, and if that's the convention, then it may as well be a word which actually means 'meaningless'. Over. (New convention, we'll end every reply with the word 'Over'.)

Right, now all that's left to choose is which fork I'll be using for "visiting" files.

Bitching about calling it "visiting" files is like saying that OS X sucks because the close button is on the left side instead of the right side. What?

And saying "It's called Emacs" is a valid argument then? By your reasoning every new scalable/clustered database or filesystem or server etc. is pathetic because, you know, "VAX had this 30 years ago". "What?" indeed.

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