Comments on: Brent Simmons On Large Cocoa Projects

By: Wade

Wade — Tue, 01 May 2007 01:45:29 +0000

They chose F5 for completion because that’s the common key for completion in most Windows IDE’s.

By: Oskar L-B

Oskar L-B — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:52:16 +0000

Since tab-completion works with Cmd-Shift-G in Finder and Open/Save dialog-boxes, I wonder why they chose F5 in Xcode. (I’ve never seen F5 been used for that in _any_ app anwyhere before.) Being the consistency-maniacal Apple, they must have a very good reason…

By: Andy Lee

Andy Lee — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:57:52 +0000

Sorry, one more quick note before I have to run.

The Ctrl-2 tip is going to be very helpful. Mousing through the function menu is a pain. I have asked for some kind of floating window or a pane like Eclipse uses so I can navigate to a particular method much of the time with one click and no dragging. While I’m waiting for that feature, I’ll have to see whether Ctrl-2 plus typeahead is satisfactory.

By: Andy Lee

Andy Lee — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:51:54 +0000

Re: “researchability” — I do not have a great memory for code, and I am easily information-overloaded, so it’s extra important for me to design, code, and comment for my future self.

I have source files grouped in directories. I keep meaning to put a small README file in each directory reminding me of the high concept behind those classes, and roughly how they work together — kind of like package.html files in javadocs.

By: Andy Lee

Andy Lee — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:46:01 +0000

I only had time to skim the article (and other developers’ responses), but some great observations are made.

Wrt to notifications, I feel the same way. I tend to be a late adopter of language and library features as I weigh them against any complications or non-deterministic behavior they may introduce in debugging.

I believe Wil Shipley wrote something about not bothering to create frameworks out of common code libraries? I could be misremembering the author. I don’t have a link offhand, but I thought he was coming from a similar mindset.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:15:35 +0000

“Open Quickly” doesn’t tab-complete, but it *does* complete when you hit F5.

By: Jens Ayton

Jens Ayton — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:28:05 +0000

Regarding command-double-click, a non-obvious feature is that if you command-double-click a function name where it is defined, it jumps to the declaration, rather than going for the definition of possible as it would otherwise.

By: njyo

njyo — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:57:13 +0000

“I hope this thread is not going to turn into a collection of cool Xcode tips… Well, why not?”

…well, if we are already on the way there: For me as a developer coming from the Java world (IntelliJ IDEA & Eclipse) one of the most annoying parts of XCode (well, it’s actually Obj-C, but XCode could help) is that refactoring of the method signature is a pain I have to do twice. Is there another way than Accessorizer to keep my .h files consistent to my .m files?

Cheers,
_Wolf

By: Jacob Rus

Jacob Rus — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:14:05 +0000

Yeah, Blake’s right. Reading Brent’s discussion of keyboarding in XCode made me realize how much I appreciate TextMate.

By: Conor

Conor — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:13:51 +0000

Ctrl-2 for the function list pop-up is a neat trick I was not aware of (#pragma mark - I picked up from the Cocoa mailing list and that makes the function list truly usable). When coding I use the regular Xcode view, however when doing the kind of research Brent mentions I spend almost all my time coding in the find window. It’s truly nice to be able to code directly in a split view and use command-e to see all the calls to a specific method and jump directly to them, even if I must kill a kitten to select the find result I want.