It feels to me like its stuck in a hell of bad incentives. Apple seems addicted to having shiny new features to announce every year at WWDC.
A decade ago Apple would release a new, pre-release version of xcode at each WWDC with new features. The new version would be unstable, but it would become stable over the next few months with subsequent point releases.
At some point the stability work seemed to never quite get there. And now it seems like Apple is in a cycle of adding new features, launching them before they're ready, and not getting stability back to baseline before the next WWDC comes around. And next year's WWDC needs new features to be announced. XCode is now in a never ending "preview" state, where none of the features added in the last few years (since Swift) work properly. And someone at apple is acting as if what everyone wants is yet more features. (Or, more likely, the manager will only be promoted if they manage to release new stuff).
From the outside it seems like XCode is slowly drowning.
A few years ago Apple announced Snow Leopard. There was no headline feature. Apple just spent the whole year making everything more stable and faster. When they announced this it was met with thunderous applause. Snow Leopard turned out to be the best release of macos ever.
A decade ago Apple would release a new, pre-release version of xcode at each WWDC with new features. The new version would be unstable, but it would become stable over the next few months with subsequent point releases.
At some point the stability work seemed to never quite get there. And now it seems like Apple is in a cycle of adding new features, launching them before they're ready, and not getting stability back to baseline before the next WWDC comes around. And next year's WWDC needs new features to be announced. XCode is now in a never ending "preview" state, where none of the features added in the last few years (since Swift) work properly. And someone at apple is acting as if what everyone wants is yet more features. (Or, more likely, the manager will only be promoted if they manage to release new stuff).
From the outside it seems like XCode is slowly drowning.
A few years ago Apple announced Snow Leopard. There was no headline feature. Apple just spent the whole year making everything more stable and faster. When they announced this it was met with thunderous applause. Snow Leopard turned out to be the best release of macos ever.
XCode desperately needs to do the same thing.