Comment by aylmao

> their insistence on using a GUI instead of a basic JSON manifest just compounds it

I think this is a big part of the problem. Apple owns the IDE and the programming languages; in theory this should lead to a great experience. In practice, because they insist you only use their languages with their ide, and their ide with their languages, it leads to lousy tool design.

Features that would be best implemented as part of the compiler suite are instead be implemented in the GUI. File formats that could be simplified live on, because everyone is using GUIs in the IDE to edit them anyway.

Fixes that should be prioritized in the IDE get punted because the IDE is not competing with any other IDE, it's the only way to develop the language, people will use it anyway, etc.