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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. IDE
  5. Brackets vs Xcode

Brackets vs Xcode

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Xcode
Xcode
Stacks19.3K
Followers14.7K
Votes213
Brackets
Brackets
Stacks450
Followers752
Votes202
GitHub Stars33.1K
Forks7.6K

Brackets vs Xcode: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Brackets and Xcode

  1. User Interface Design: Brackets primarily focuses on front-end web development with a minimalistic design and support for web technologies, while Xcode is tailored for developing software applications for macOS and iOS platforms with a more complex and feature-rich interface.

  2. Language Support: Brackets is well-suited for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript coding, making it ideal for web designers and developers. On the other hand, Xcode provides comprehensive support for various programming languages such as Swift, Objective-C, and C++, enabling developers to create diverse types of applications.

  3. Platform Compatibility: Brackets is available as a cross-platform code editor that can run on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems, facilitating collaboration and code consistency across different operating systems. In contrast, Xcode is exclusive to macOS, limiting its usage to Apple's ecosystem and making it the go-to choice for iOS and macOS app development.

  4. Features and Tools: Brackets emphasizes simplicity and efficiency, offering features like live preview and preprocessor support for streamlined web development tasks. Conversely, Xcode boasts a wide range of advanced tools, such as Interface Builder for designing user interfaces, debugging capabilities, and integrated performance analysis tools tailored for native app development.

  5. Community and Support: Brackets has a vibrant and active community of web developers who contribute to its extension ecosystem, providing additional functionality and enhancing the overall development experience. In comparison, Xcode benefits from Apple's robust developer documentation, resources, and official support channels, catering to the needs of professional developers building apps for Apple devices.

  6. Project Management: While Brackets is primarily a code editor that focuses on individual files and small projects, Xcode is a comprehensive integrated development environment (IDE) that offers project management features like version control integration, build configurations, and extensive project organization capabilities, making it suitable for large-scale software development projects.

In Summary, Brackets and Xcode cater to distinct developer needs, with Brackets excelling in web development simplicity and cross-platform compatibility, while Xcode offers advanced features and tools tailored for macOS and iOS app development within Apple's ecosystem.

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Detailed Comparison

Xcode
Xcode
Brackets
Brackets

The Xcode IDE is at the center of the Apple development experience. Tightly integrated with the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks, Xcode is an incredibly productive environment for building amazing apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

Source Editor;Assistant Editor;Asset Catalog;OpenGL Frame Capture;Version Editor;Interface Builder Built In;iOS Simulator;Integrated Build System;Continuous Integration;Instrument Library;Command Line Tools
Code Hints from a PSD;Inline Editors;Live Preview;Preprocessor Support
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
33.1K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
7.6K
Stacks
19.3K
Stacks
450
Followers
14.7K
Followers
752
Votes
213
Votes
202
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 130
    IOS Development
  • 33
    Personal assistant on steroids
  • 29
    Easy setup
  • 17
    Excellent integration with Clang
  • 3
    Beautiful
Cons
  • 6
    Massively bloated and complicated for smaller projects
  • 3
    Horrible auto completiting and text editing
  • 1
    Slow startup
  • 1
    Very slow emulator
Pros
  • 51
    Beautiful UI
  • 40
    Lightweight
  • 25
    Extremely customizable
  • 20
    Free plugins
  • 14
    Live Preview
Cons
  • 3
    Not good for backend developer
  • 1
    You have to edit json file to set your settings.
  • 1
    Bad node.js support
Integrations
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa (OS X)
Cocoa (OS X)
JavaScript
JavaScript
Node.js
Node.js
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Dreamweaver
Adobe Dreamweaver

What are some alternatives to Xcode, Brackets?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Atom

Atom

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Vim

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

PhpStorm

PhpStorm

PhpStorm is a PHP IDE which keeps up with latest PHP & web languages trends, integrates a variety of modern tools, and brings even more extensibility with support for major PHP frameworks.

IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ IDEA

Out of the box, IntelliJ IDEA provides a comprehensive feature set including tools and integrations with the most important modern technologies and frameworks for enterprise and web development with Java, Scala, Groovy and other languages.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio

Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.

WebStorm

WebStorm

WebStorm is a lightweight and intelligent IDE for front-end development and server-side JavaScript.

NetBeans IDE

NetBeans IDE

NetBeans IDE is FREE, open source, and has a worldwide community of users and developers.

PyCharm

PyCharm

PyCharm’s smart code editor provides first-class support for Python, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, CSS, popular template languages and more. Take advantage of language-aware code completion, error detection, and on-the-fly code fixes!

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