An Alternative to XCode?

Yesterday I fired up XCode 4 for the first time. I needed to write a small utility for Archimedes in Objective-C. It was just pure frustration. Even though XCode 4 is a big improvement on XCode 3, it is still some distance behind the state-of-the-art software development IDEs. I found myself wishing there was a viable alternative for Objective-C development.

The JetBrains team – who bring joy to Java and C# developers every day – seem to have heard my wishes overnight. Today I received this e-mail:

This is a short notice to inform you that we’ve just opened the Early Access Program for appCode, a new Objective-C IDE. You are welcome to download it, try and let us know what you think.

Yes! I gave it a work-out and have concluded that already in this early stage of development that it is what XCode 4 should have been.

This is music to my ears:

We are very much looking forward to your feedback to help us create a tool you would enjoy using daily.