“Xcode is a fantastic development environment for developing Mac, iPhone, and iPad applications. But it has some areas for improvement. In this post, I’ll explore some improvements to how documentation and autocompletion is integrated into the development workflow and how Xcode could provide specialized interfaces for working with system frameworks.”
Those are some fantastic suggestions. They would certainly reduce the amount of time I spend looking stuff up on the internet.
Let’s take only the first proposal about embedded documentation. I already see two major issues here :
1/Visual bloat : Instead of a relatively small list of commands, autocompletion would now hide most of your code with a gigantic help windows, even when you don’t need help (which is the case, say, 85% of the times you use autocompletion ? It’s most of the time used when you know about a command and only don’t remember its name). Ever thought about those who code on 12-inch macbook screens ?
2/Performance bloat : Help is quite big in large coding tools. I don’t know about Xcode in particular, but I suppose that it’s just like in Delphi, Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab : help takes a few seconds to show up due to long loading times. And now, this guy would like to wait all that time each time an autocompletion windows happens ? Or would like 200MB of help files to be permanently kept in memory just in case ?
Edited 2010-06-04 07:40 UTC
I like to see documentation about the suggested functions and the proposed solution is similar to how Eclipse handles it.
It might sound elitist, but optimizing Xcode for 12-inches screens is like optimizing Photoshop’s GUI for a 10-inches netbook screen. You want to have good defaults and customizable settings so that you can turn the features which do not work well on a small screen.
I would not want Photoshop to only cater to people with 4 monitors (all 32-inches wide), but I would not want it to target a 10-inches screen either
.
Coding is not graphic design. It’s the most basic activity of a computer and it should be doable on platforms which cost less than ^a‘not1000 and fit in a usual backpack, in the same way as Photoshop is usable on a 15-inch laptop screen ^^’
I don’t have stats around, but I bet that the most commonly sold computer nowadays is a laptop with a screen size between 13 and 16 inches. Why should coding only be done on a gigantic-sized desktop computer which eats up 500W in order to work ?
Edited 2010-06-04 10:22 UTC
Oh, I agree… but because a 15 inches monitor already crosses my “useful to code and work on graphics on” line
. Screen real estate is valuable 
.
A 12 inches netbook is usable for coding, but if possible I’d say to go with a 15 inches model… 13 inches models are sold, by Apple too, but are more of the “so small that is very portable, but I can also be somewhat productive with it” kind of device.
I was talking about a MacBook, not a netbook ^^ But you’re right, they are 13-inch wide now… I recently got a battery for my mother’s Powerbook G4, and was surprised to discover that it was 12-inch wide, so atm I often confuse 12-inch and 13-inch screen sizes…
Anyway, I managed to do some serious coding work on an old screen that had about the same resolution as modern 13″ screens (oh, when will apps will use inches/centimeters instead of pixels so that pixel resolution does not matter anymore ?), using the Delphi ide.
(PS : I agree with the screen real estate argument, but I may be biaised because my future laptop is to replace my desktop computer for some reasons, so my criteria was <<as large as possible while fitting in a 17″ backpack>>. Turns out that in the wide screen era, 17″ screens do not exist anymore, so I’m getting a 16″ laptop)
Edited 2010-06-04 12:49 UTC
Is there a 12 inch macbook?
Not anymore, there were iBook and Powerbook 12″
Edited 2010-06-05 04:23 UTC
Wow, impressive! Those are some great ideas. Apple would do well to take some suggestions from this guy. I always have the documentation open on a second monitor, but could get used to something like this.