Anyone who uses multiple IDEs along with Xcode recognizes just how far behind Xcode is compared to others. I would even go as far as to argue it is at least half a decade behind Eclipse. Features which I have long grown use to having are completely absent in Xcode. Then, about a month ago, I discovered AppCode and started using it for my Obj-C development at work. I could repeat the feature set mentioned on their website, but instead I’ll assume you’ve read that and outline the crucial parts.
What Objective-C Has Learned
In a few of my recent posts, I outlined some things which I believe that Objective-C can learn from Java, the most recent discussing error handling. In order to avoid the impression that I may not like Objective-C, I figured I should outline some of what I believe are the most important improvements Objective-C has made.
Properties
When properties were first introduced, I read several who described them as simply syntax sugar. While they didn’t initially add much of anything that couldn’t already be done in the language before, they did yield one important feature: generated code. The code necessary in a setter, in particular the releasing of a previous value and setting the new value, was often fraught with errors. Despite code examples on a proper setter from Apple, I saw several cases where a setter failed to release the previous value, or retain the new value, or more commonly, do those two in the correct order. Enabling the compiler to generate this code for the programmer removed many of these errors.