Steve Troughton-Smith

Three apps from zero to functional in a day. There are a bunch of existential questions this raises (we know that new Xcode developers are never going to write actual code again, right?), but even with my reasonable skill level it took a looot of effort (8 hours of nonstop prompting and debugging just today, and I forgot to eat) to get what I wanted in the shape that I wanted it.

This is the biggest change to Xcode (and Project Builder) in its entire history, dropped on a random Tuesday

Feb 4 at 8:34pmIvory for Mac
Show threadCurtis McHaleFeb 4
@stroughtonsmith I recently said the same thing about elisp in Emacs and when that got to r/Emacs I've been on blast
Show threadgameshack_ Feb 4
@stroughtonsmith someone made a good point that the software engineer job is transforming from writing code to reviewing code.
Show threadgullevek ☢️ 🇯🇵Feb 4
@gameshack_ @stroughtonsmith And how can people review code if they never wrote code?
Show threadAnimeAndVisialFeb 4
@stroughtonsmith A pixel art editor?! I didn’t expect it to be able to actually do such a thing. Maybe one day someone will just straight up vibe code the entirety of a Photoshop clone. I hate Adobe so I have 0 sympathy if that happens.
Show threadMarcin KrzyzanowskiFeb 4
@stroughtonsmith yes, and Xcode users discover only today what everyone else did for the past year. In that sense that is not a revolution per-se. it (integrated claude-code/codex) was just a missing piece in Xcode, becasue agentic by Apple didn't really work well.
Show threadOngion 🥚🐞Feb 4
@stroughtonsmith if new XCode developers are "never going to write actual code again", how are they going to build up the "reasonable level of skill" it took for you? I just don't see this being nearly as useful for someone who isn't already reasonably experienced coding.
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 4
@Ongion I have absolutely no idea, but it's going to happen regardless
Show threadgullevek ☢️ 🇯🇵Feb 4
@stroughtonsmith @Ongion Weep for the future. It will be flooded with shite apps that leak all your data
Show threadColinFeb 4
@stroughtonsmith I've shipped a couple apps through agentic coding, and I think simply having a knowledge of frameworks and components and what they can do is a critical thing, at least right now. Otherwise these things very often pick the wrong tool for the job (eg a UILabel for what should really be a UITextView).
Show threadRichard SmithFeb 4

@stroughtonsmith Been doing it for 8-9 months via Visual Studio Code with Xcode running in the background.

Been a dev for 30 years and lead a team of devs, and the existential questions fascinate me. Everyone is only very slowly waking up to what this means.

Show threadKenFeb 4

@stroughtonsmith A random Tuesday after the random Monday that OpenAI dropped the Codex app? 😅

(Question inspired by Gruber’s post)

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/02/03/openai-codex

OpenAI’s Codex

Link to: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/2/introducing-the-codex-app/

Daring Fireball
Show threadSon of a SailorFeb 4
@stroughtonsmith Ken Kocienda (@kocienda) has been doing some very interesting posts about how to productively prompt a chatbot for a software project.
Show threadKen KociendaFeb 4
@Sonofasailor @stroughtonsmith 👋
Show threadKen KociendaFeb 4
@Sonofasailor @stroughtonsmith https://tugtool.dev/journal/how-i-write-code-with-ai/
How I Write Code With AI

I use AI coding assistants extensively, but I don't vibe code

tug
Show threadKen KociendaFeb 5
@Sonofasailor @stroughtonsmith So far, I’ve been going through those steps manually. For the past two days, I've started to build a more automated/ergonomic agent flow around these ideas. This is a common refrain in my work with AI: figure out the patterns, then teach the AI the patterns.
Show threadJohn VoorheesFeb 6
@stroughtonsmith Yeah, the idea that these tools are "easy mode" isn't quite right. They'll get you 80% of the way to an app very quickly, but just like building apps without agents, the last 20% is a slog of polishing and debugging.
Show threadArmenFeb 6
@johnvoorhees @stroughtonsmith And the remaining effort of publishing and marketing are still there and haven’t been automated like software creation: discovery in the App Store is still related to ad spend. Or software that makes it long term have to solve the problems for the masses and tell a good story. All this has made one door easy to open (which is fantastic) but there are plenty more doors to get through still.
Show threadJohn VoorheesFeb 6
@armengrewal @stroughtonsmith Absolutely, the code is just one small piece of the puzzle.