[jasonjei]

I can attest that Visual Studio and Xcode can both feel laggy, especially with respect to C++ development and static analysis (Intellisense or whatever they call it). However, this may not be so much Microsoft's or Apple's fault as much as that IDE tools carry high overhead as they have to manage a lot of symbols from every header file referenced, including parameter lookups, etc.

On top of that, I think Xcode (like Eclipse) compiles your code as you type, leaving you no surprises until you need to link...

[Kristine1975]

Xcode checks your code as you type (90% of the time, sometimes early errors, e.g. in a header, make it give up completely on a file). Compiling still is a separate step. Current versions of VS do the same, though, even for C++.

[roel_v]

Visual studio compiles as you type. It has to, to work with e.g. 'auto'. Vs has two compilers actually, one that compiles as you type (and tries to guess what you mean more), and one for the real compile cycle.