Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Xcode more difficult to download. The Mac version was around 800GB. The combined version is typically
around 3GB.
FIGURE 1.3
The Xcode 3 IDE was productive but limited by obvious UI inefficiencies, such as poor support for editing mul-
tiple files simultaneously.
CAUTION
Strong Java support was a feature of earlier Xcode versions, but that has been downgraded in recent releases.
Apple has moved Xcode toward supporting C-family development, including C, Objective-C, C++, and Objective-
C++. These are now the officially supported languages for iOS and OS X development.
Alternatives to Xcode
Xcode is optimized for visual development of Objective-C and Cocoa projects. In practice this means the Cocoa
and Cocoa Touch libraries and documentation are tightly integrated into Xcode. Xcode 4 has moved toward im-
proving support for C++, but there are still limits to how easily it's possible to mix Objective-C, Objective-C++,
and C++ code, Apple's own libraries and example source code are a combination of traditional C and Objective-
C. C++ and Objective-C++ aren't widely used.
