[mrbombastic]

I’d recommend just using Xcode, if you really want you can use any editor and the command line tools to build. That said despite being a bloated behemoth Xcode has a lot of very helpful tools built in and it being the default for all iOS devs means a lot of tutorials and docs are going to assume usage.

[kitsunesoba]

Additionally, a lot of the most common types of “grumpiness” encountered with Xcode can be avoided by avoiding code smells when writing Swift — SourceKit (which powers Xcode’s syntax highlighting, autocomplete, etc) doesn’t like it if you deeply nest closures, get a little too crazy with chaining optionals, etc.

Oh, and if at all possible avoid XIBs and storyboards and write your UI in pure code. Interface Builder was once a thing of beauty back when it was its own app, but it’s been a slow quirky mess ever since it got merged into Xcode. Code only UIs are a bit more verbose but it’s not too bad with Swift+UIKit and it’s so much less trouble, especially when you consider how much more git friendly code is than machine generated XML (merge conflicts with storyboards are nightmarish).

Doing this, I encounter little trouble with Xcode using it day in and day out. As a whole it’s smoother than my typical session in Android Studio.