I abhor Interface Builder
This is mainly regarding iPhone development using Interface builder.
I absolutely abhor Interface Builder. I literally wasted three hours last night trying to get the proper arrangement of UITabBarController, UINavigationController, and a couple table views. At the end of this exercise, I finally had what I was looking for.
But then I compared it to what it would take to write it in code.
As an exercise, I decided to scrap the Nibs and write the code:
- Set up Tab Controller: 2 lines
- Set up Tab Items in Tab Controller: 1 line per tab + 2 lines for array creation/assignment
I wasted three hours of time for this?
The more and more I write a new application for the iPhone, the more I realize how much UI work stays in code. The most common class to use for driving an interface is the UITableView, and there’s no way to use Interface Builder to set up a predefined list.
Interface Builder tries to go the distance, and to upper-management types it probably succeeds. But the goal of Interface Builder is to separate the UI from code using the MVC model. The inspiration was to allow UI designers freedom, and allow coders the freedom to avoid UI design. Unfortunately, Interface Builder for iPhone projects absolutely fails at this.
And thus my plea goes like this to Apple: Give us tools that don’t suck, please?
1 year ago