Hacker News Reader

Comment by dfabulich | Hacker News Reader

If you're not developing an iOS/macOS app, you can skip Xcode completely and just use the `swift` CLI, which is perfectly cromulent. (It works great on Linux and Windows.)

View on HN

There'a great indie app called Notepad.exe [1] for developing iOS and macOS apps using macOS. You can also write and test Swift apps for Linux easily [2]. It also supports Python and JavaScript.

If you hate Xcode, this is definitely worth a look.

[1]: https://notepadexe.com

[2]: https://notepadexe.com/news/#notepad-14-linux-support

So wait this thing is real? Calling it notepad.exe gave me the impression that it's just an elaborate joke about how you can code any program in Notepad...

It might have a joke name but it costs $80!

That's the real joke...

Or pay $19.99 for a year and be able to run it on 3 devices.

That's a pretty good deal.

It claims “native performance”, which makes me suspect it’s another Electron bloat.

Instead of speculating you could download and see for yourself that it’s not. It’s by Marcin Krzyzanowski who is all about native iOS and macOS apps.

Even if you're developing for macOS you can skip xcode. I've had a great time developing a menubar app for macOS and not once did I need to open xcode.

curious what you used - I've been looking into making a menubar app and really hate xcode

claude -p "Make a menubar app with AppKit (Cocoa) that does X"

I would avoid it for Linux and Windows. Even if they are "technically supported", Apple's focus is clearly macOS and iOS. Being a second- (or even third-) class citizen often introduces lots of issues in practice ("oh, nobody teenaged that functionality on Windows"...)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com