# Xcode 100 Hacker News commenters recommended Xcode and 209 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (22 owners). **Verdict:** Apple's free IDE, praised by long-time users for strong debugging tools and steadily improving AI agent support, though many find it buggy and tied to recent Macs and macOS. ## Why people recommend it - Powerful, well-designed development environment (4 comments): "one of the most powerful and well designed development and instrumentation environments I've ever used" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46841979)) "The UI is nice and I already know how to set up projects so it’s much better for me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46494890)) "one of the best designed, best functioning, and most powerful suites for programming" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46842583)) - Strong AI and agent integration (5 comments): "Xcode 27 which is in beta ships a much better codex integration. There are problems in Xcode that are frustrating" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48900701)) ""visually by capturing Xcode Previews" is probably the thing that will make this worthwhile" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46875558)) "Xcode 27 is such a huge leap forward in the ergonomics of vibe coding with Xcode" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48902153)) - Steadily improving over time (4 comments): "Little by little, Xcode is making progress. It's still far from perfect, but at least it's getting better." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47700474)) "people that complain about XCode don't know how well they have compare to what it was before" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46892692)) "Xcode 27 is such a huge leap forward in the ergonomics of vibe coding with Xcode" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48902153)) - Compares well to other IDEs (3 comments): "Xcode isn’t too bad of an experience and I’d say comparable to and in some ways better than Android Studio" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46875534)) "It was head and shoulders above many of the alternatives for mobile app development back then" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46885220)) "It's even more consistent than VSCode, which occasionally leaks memory and blows itself up." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46503275)) ## What people warn about - Buggy, crashes, unfinished features (3 comments): "the live preview was so tempramental and crashed so often it was barely usable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46885917)) "it somehow corrupted either my project's metadata and/or its own internal preferences so badly that it would no longer launch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46844517)) "they've been adding new features but never finished them and taken the time to properly bugfix them along the way" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46875954)) - Requires Mac and latest macOS (3 comments): "At least I wouldn't need to buy a special computer to run it, like the Xcode development environment for iOS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49026284)) "It's only distributed through the Mac App Store, and downloads from Mac App Store require an Apple ID." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47545927)) "Sorry we only support Xcode on the latest version of MacOS, how else will your build machine roll out of the OS support window and make you replace a functioning machine?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48903068)) - Increasingly bloated and less coherent (3 comments): "as Apple's piled additional features and APIs into Cocoa/Xcode I find it quite a bit less coherent or intuitive or ergonomic than it used to be" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581111)) "one of the worst ide in mobile/desktop development and an embarrassment for a company of apple's size and profits" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46834456)) "they've been adding new features but never finished them and taken the time to properly bugfix them along the way" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46875954)) - Hard to target older iOS versions (2 comments): "Current Xcode only supports a short list of the most recent iOS SDKs as targets" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46066804)) "Apple does not make it super easy to find. The easy "happy path" in Xcode is to only support the most recent OS versions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47661989)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [JetBrains IDEs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-ides.md): 233 recommend - [IntelliJ IDEA](https://hackerapproved.com/p/intellij-idea.md): 206 recommend - [Microsoft Visual Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio.md): 165 recommend - [Delphi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/delphi.md): 126 recommend - [JetBrains Rider](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-rider.md): 68 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Xcode", https://hackerapproved.com/p/xcode/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).