What’s more scandalous are the 10+ gig Xcode updates. What justifies this absurd payload size for every minor version upgrade?

This is fixed in Xcode 15.

The "absurd payload size" is the effect of having at least four different SDKs (macOS, watchOS, i[Pad]OS, tvOS) bundled, including a simulator for three of them.

Xcode 15 is a ~3.5 gigs download, and includes only macOS SDKs, with all of the other (including the visionOS SDK + sim) ones being downloaded on-demand.

I swear delta updates were a thing at one point. When did that stop being the case?

They’re still A Thing for App Store apps I think, but:

- using App Store for Xcode was historically very painful and ~nobody who uses Xcode daily downloads it from MAS

- it never worked ~that well~ for Xcode anyway - apart from the big download sizes, the problem with Xcode and the bundled SDKs is that they’re all approximately trillion little text files, and it’s not unheard of to wait longer for codesign (technically unxip) verification than for the download itself, which negates the user-facing benefits of delta upgrades for many users.

I always use MAS to install my production Xcode, specifically because it lets me have small updates.

I've been doing this for as long as it's been available there as a developer at Apple, in my own startup, and in my current role as well. Never had a problem with it.