I mean you can stay in VSCode for most activities if you hate Xcode that much (I can relate btw). Plugins like Sweetpad make this possible. My approach now is to develop all logic in small Swift packages and run swift test in VSCode (or Claude Code), so I only absolutely need Xcode for debugging and building releases. Every once in a while I try SwiftUI previews, but those are usually broken anyways.
Ya I was considering a similar workflow last time I was steeped in SwiftUI. I don't dislike it that much actually, maybe just how slow the compile and error alerting is/was last time. I mainly found mac SwiftUI performance to be lacking, along with the transparency and documentation of the api. Swift itself is fine, and I give a xcode a lot of credit for somehow functioning as well as it does with so much accumulated functionality/complexity/bloat.
SwiftUI previews were... manageable but not great.