Adobe AIR vs. JetBrains Rider vs. Xcode

I would recommend [Adobe AIR] because it works very well, I just wish there were more resources out there on it to help the onboarding.

Incentivized

Initially you may think it’s not worth paying and that there are better free options, which is definitely a lie we once tried to live with. It has everything you may ever need in .NET world, code analysis and debugging works super well and all the SQL/noSQL related integrations are just next level compared to the competition. It’s worth every penny.

Incentivized

This is almost not a case of Xcode being the 300-pound gorilla in the space, but of it being essentially the ONLY viable gorilla in the space. There are other text editors, of course, that can be used for coding; and in some cases other IDE's might make sense for a cross-platform development scenario, but since this is Apple's in-house tool, fighting against that flow is just going to be an exercise in frustration. And, if you need help from Developer Support, they are going to be most familiar with Xcode.

Incentivized

• Adobe AIR supports a lot of commonly needed features for mobile app development.
• It is fairly stable and consistent once you learn how to use it.
• It is cross-platform and is supported by some useful third-party plugins.

Incentivized

• Provides a smooth, efficient IDE for developing .NET applications. Performance has been much better than Visual Studio in my experience.
• Integrated refactoring tools are really comprehensive and useful.
• Integrates with other JetBrains products such as TeamCity, Upsource, dotTrace, etc.

Incentivized

• Debugging
• Profiling
• Great IDE

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• Over the course of months/years, various security exploits and other issues are discovered and patched in AIR, often requiring you to rebuild and resubmit mobile apps to the various storefronts. This happens often enough that it's worth mentioning as a major con.
• While development on Adobe AIR seems to be fairly constant, there is very little communication between the community and Adobe regarding the future and general support of AIR. The track record of Flash (and particularly Flash Mobile) does not inspire much confidence that Adobe intends to support Flash/AIR for years to come.
• Adobe AIR does not seem to perform as well (in terms of raw performance, memory usage, framerates, responsiveness, etc.) as other hybrid solutions for certain tasks. For example using shaders tends to be experimental still, and graphic/animation intensive projects often require the use of third party frameworks such as Starling.

Incentivized

• Startup time. It takes a while to index big projects.
• Rarely it loses the intellisense and the only way to get it back is by restarting.
• Memory usage for big projects

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• Documentation
• Number of settings can be overwhelming
• Embedded help for settings and configuration
• Templates
• Collaboration
• Managing of credentials (although this has recently gotten better)

Incentivized

Due to the performance and productivity benefits we get with Rider, we will continue to use it for the foreseeable future.

Incentivized

Although Adobe AIR is just an SDK without an actual "UI" it's commonly used within Flash, Flash Builder, or FlashDevelop. Considering the integration with Flash IDE, there are very few tools that can compete with its features.

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Rider is a great IDE with extensive C# refactoring support and .NET-specific knowledge. This is great for building .NET applications but for our purposes, the Unity specific suggestions are really helpful.

JetBrains Rider is great as an editing and debugging environment. It reliably connects to the Unity editor and allows debugging, which some IDEs are not as reliable at doing.

Incentivized

Xcode occasionally exhibits some behaviors that are hard to explain, but are generally cleared by restarting the program. In an application this large and complex, I suppose this is somewhat expected. The sheer vastness of the frameworks collection has to be a huge management issue all by itself. However, those breaks in the flow can have impact on developer productivity.

Incentivized

Since we don't use the cloud based features of Xcode, it is basically available 24/7 for us. We don't need the extended compilation features that are offered in the cloud as our projects to this point have not been that large or complex. We have never seen a wholesale breakdown of Xcode availability at any point in our use of the product.

Incentivized

Every developer wants faster compiles, but that can be achieved by either going to the cloud or by provisioning the local station to a higher powered configuration. My only minor complaint is the amount of local mass storage that Xcode as a system consumes. This makes it interesting to set up a development environment on a midrange laptop, however it is easily managed with external storage at a reasonable price.

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The support forums and knowledge base are extensive and the JetBrains support staff respond quickly to new posts and help resolve issues. There is also a publicly accessible issue tracking system, which allows you to stay on top of any bug fixes or enhancement requests.

Incentivized

Originally, Adobe AIR was the only game in town, and its blend of flexibility in platforms it could publish to (PC, Mac, iOS, Android), ease of use, and familiarity made it the clear choice. Now Adobe no longer supports it, and we’ve found the transition to Harmon unworkable for us.

Incentivized

Rider is hands down smoother and way less glitchy than Visual Studio Enterprise. There are way more refactoring capabilities and spell check so that your code is readable, maintainable, and easy to follow. Since Rider is cross-platform, our developers are no longer constrained to only using Windows. We can now get a familiar development environment across Mac, Windows, or Linux!

Incentivized

Xcode is a much easier to use and full featured IDE than many of the competitors. It also is a way better experience to use. Much better looking in general

Incentivized

Xcode only loses points due to the occasional situation where it manages to somehow tie itself into a knot and starts to exhibit odd symptoms. This is almost always solved by simply saving progress and restarting the environment. Fortunately, that doesn't happen too frequently and is easily repaired while taking a short break to walk around and stretch.

Incentivized

• Allows easy porting of functionality and look and feel to many diverse platforms.
• Shorten development and deployment time.
• Reduced training and support costs by re-using common widgets.

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• Built in Resharper into the license fee, great, you likely want it
• Demands less resources from computer so needing a beefy work computer might not be the case, save money on equipment.

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• It's helped us gain worldwide distribution of our native iOS app
• It's allowed us to build a high performance experience
• It has allowed us to build stable software by helping us write unit tests

Incentivized