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VSCode has done the thing that nobody expected MS to do, change the way code was written on Unix/Linux. I love linux/unix, but the problem always was with the

VSCode has done the thing that nobody expected MS to do, change the way code was written on Unix/Linux. I love linux/unix, but the problem always was with the lack of an awesome text editor cum IDE, yep there is eclipse but it is too clunky, I do not like sublime as it isn't FOSS (call me crazy), gedit took way too much memory, geany is fast and mean but the UI sucks plus functionality isn't that great. Enter VSCode, code writing feels amazing again, not the functional part, but the actual manual part. I do not like vi because I primarily was learning web dev and I didn't really get my head around using vi effectively and still learn the web dev, so I am not a emacs/vi superstar as I have heard that both of them are fine text editors. but for the people like me who don't or can't use terminal based editors, VSCode is quite literally the best. The new Che project of Eclipse does seem promising, but the last time I tried installing it, it took around an hour, consumed GBs of my bandwidth and still nothing. I am still Waiting for the day I'll be able to program in its entirety on my android device. I used Atom but it is too slow, it is surprising that VScode and atom share the same ancestor but one is blazingly fast and Atom is so damn slow. Edit: yep vscode didn't transform coding on unix, it merely changed it to some extent, and why the downvoting? point out where I am wrong, I'll get to learn!

mjt0229 11y ago
Really? VSCode has already transformed the way code was written on Unix/Linux? I beg to differ. 10 years ago (when I discovered Eclipse, not sure when it was originally released), Eclipse was a staggering leap forward for Java programming. I'm no Eclipse fan, but I don't think that VSCode has already changed the world in the way that Eclipse did, and certainly not in its short lifespan.
- Analemma_ 11y ago
  I think what the parent meant was that VSC (along with Atom, and to lesser extent SublimeText) is a good example of "the middle way" that is rapidly gaining popularity. First we had console editors, but they weren't powerful enough, especially for newer languages/frameworks. Then we had full IDEs (VS/Eclipse/IntelliJ), but they got to be slow and clunky. Now the trend is toward "enhanced text editors" (VSC/Atom/ST): editors that can have modular plugin functionality and interact with the console so you don't lose any of its versatility. They're usually faster and more lightweight than IDEs but keep most of what you need. The parent is saying that Eclipse was the flagship of "Generation 2" and VSC is for "Generation 3" And remember, no one is saying you have to use these programs. Console editors and IDEs will still be here. This is another option for people who want it, which has turned out to be a lot of people.
  - mjt0229 11y ago
    What I'm taking issue with is the description of VSC as "changing the way we code on Unix/Linux". Given your interpretation, Atom and SublimeText and other tools predate VSC and fill much the same role. So I don't see VSC as being transformative in that way. That's not to say it might not be a nice tool, but it's not a revolution either.
    - Analemma_ 11y ago
      I understand; I just think you're being a little harsh on the OP, even if their language was a bit exuberant. They said they tried Atom and found it too slow, so if VSC was the first "3rd gen editor" (a term I just made up) that was usable in their workflow, then for them, it is a revolution. Assume good faith when comments are ambiguous :)
      - thewhitetulip 11y ago
        Yep, that's what I meant, earlier I didn't have such an awesome text editor with git inbuilt, eclipse is clunky and stuff, vi and emacs are too hard to learn, didn't have that much time to learn every small stuff that vi can do, so vscode changed the way I write code, and for most of the "new" developers, it will change the way they write code, gone are the days when you are staring at the screen wondering what was that shortcut. at least for developing webapps
        mercurial 11y ago
        Eclipse is not a code editor. It's an IDE. It offers a bazillion things out of the box (a lot of it that VS doesn't do without Resharper), but you're going to pay the price in terms of performance and RAM, sure.
        mjt0229 11y ago
        I would strongly suggest that at some point in your career, you take the time to learn either vi or Emacs, even if you still use VS Code everything.
x5n1 11y ago
I use Visual Code for Golang, for everything else Linux has other stuff that's better imo. Like Netbeans and PyCharm. Seems like I should be using it for TypeScript.
- ausjke 11y ago
  what about node.js development?
  - x5n1 11y ago
    netbeans
zxcvcxz 11y ago
How do people put up with VS Code and laggy text input though? I used it on Win10 and Linux and both occasions there is noticeably lag when typing.I look at the screen while I type most of the time and this lag makes coding impossible for me because I like to see what I'm writing in real time. I've noticed this happen especially on big projects/files. Also, sometimes the auto complete popup is very slow to appear and causes lag. I don't use many GUI text editors and have not compared VS to Atom/sublime, but for me this is just unacceptable.
- KirinDave 11y ago
  It's not laggy for me on any device I can run it on. I regularly use IntelliJ Idea and that feels sticky and slow compared to the input of VSCode.
- nix0n 11y ago
  For me, Kate was the solution to this since it uses text completion not code completion.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ultramancool 11y ago
Atom was around before VSCode and they feel roughly equivalent to me, no? They're both web browser based even... I'm a heavy IDE and Emacs guy though, so perhaps I'm missing something.
- mjt0229 11y ago
  Agreed. I don't see anything in VSCode that's not present in any of the vast array of alternatives. But then again, I live in IntelliJ and Emacs land. I don't mind Atom but don't really use it for anything. Light Table might deserve the term "transformative", but I didn't find it usable enough to rely on.
- mrnd 11y ago
  I've been using both Atom and VSCode over the past few months and gradually got to the point where I just prefer VSCode. It's hard to pinpoint a specific reason, but it feels faster and a little more polished.
- devy 11y ago
  > Atom was around before VSCode Nope. Visual Studio Code was created before Atom.[1] Although both VS Code and Atom are based on Electron[1] and are both Chrome-based. VS Code does seem to be stealing Atom's thunder as what they say [1] [1] https://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-seems-to-be-lossing-contributions-and-users-due-to-third-party-electron-based-ides/24901 https://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-seems-to-be-lossing-contribut...
  - abritishguy 11y ago
    Electron (formerly called Atom-shell) was created for Atom. The source you cited even says this!
    - devy 11y ago
      Read this particular comment in that link. https://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-seems-to-be-lossing-contributions-and-users-due-to-third-party-electron-based-ides/24901/3 https://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-seems-to-be-lossing-contribut...
antiffan 11y ago
What was lacking in Atom for you?
- thewhitetulip 11y ago
  it starts with the speed, atom is clunky and slow. If I do not have any other alternative them Atom is good enough, but geany and vscode are way way better than atom. I'd rather do all fancy plugin stuff of atom using python and use geany than use Atom because of its slow speed. I wonder why anyone isn't doing anything for that considering github is the company being atom and that vscode and atom both are based on electron yet vscode is so damn faster than atom
- jhasse 11y ago
  It's buggy. Plugins break all the time. Also: Doesn't ask me to save my unsaved files when I close the editor. Sublime Text called this feature "hotexit", but in Atom there's no way to disable it.
- blacksmith_tb 11y ago
  Atom is great in many ways, and I personally don't have any major complaints about speed, but it disappoints me in lots of little ways. For example, on two different machines, when I upgraded to 1.7.0, Atom failed to reopen my open tabs - they all became 'untitled'. And a couple of them were unsaved (my fault, of course, but I hadn't ever been burned by Sublime doing the same drill).
Mikeb85 11y ago
Ummm, no. VS Code is a decent editor, nothing more. It certainly doesn't transform the way code is written on Unix/Linux. Vim and Emacs are still superior if you want to put the time in, and both have non-terminal interfaces. They can also be both customized to be whatever you want them to be, there's not really a limit to their functionality except what plugins are already written. Ditto for Atom, though of course, it does seem to be more web based for the moment (though Atom does have great plugins for Go, Nim, and I'm sure a bunch of other languages). In the grand scheme of things, tools like compilers, debuggers, interpreters, other command line tools (like completion servers), etc..., matter more than editors anyway. Edit - for the record, VS Code seems great. But it's not revolutionary.
- thewhitetulip 11y ago
  That's what, gone are the days when we'd spend hours and hours to learn the little little ways of vi and the myriad functions in emacs. Now we need to get things done, can't afford to sit down and study the entire functions of vi and emacs. I don't mean to troll but after switching to vscode and the go plugin I learned go webdev and wrote this small intro book, http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook/ http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook... That is the power of vscode, it provided a good enough way to play with code, yes not outright innovation, but an awesome text editor nonetheless.
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    Atom has a great Go plugin: linting, context aware completion, fixes code style on save, etc..., all powered by Go's command line tools. I'm not saying Vim and Emacs are the be-all (I program mostly in R, so RStudio is my main tool), only that VS Code hasn't changed anything fundamentally. It's just a good editor.
    - jagger27 11y ago
      Sublime Text has GoSublime as well.
  - 11y ago
krzyk 11y ago
If you liked Eclipse, then you should take a look at IntelliJ IDEA (and its companion IDEs), they are a leap forward from Eclipse.
- levemi 11y ago
  Agreed, IntelliJ IDEA is so good I can't really use other editors for projects. For editing regular files outside of a project I still use vim or TextEdit/Notepad. I prefer Intellij so much I use CLion instead of Xcode on OS X and Visual Studio on Windows 10.
  - rhodysurf 11y ago
    I didnt think Clion worked with MSVC?
    - levemi 11y ago
      It probably doesn't. I use MinGW on Windows. Once Windows 10 adds the announced linux support I guess I'll start using that instead. :) I can build .exe's that run fine on Windows this way and executables that run on OS X (using the X-Code supplied compiler and build tools that CLion depends on for OS X). I can get qt, wxWidgets and GLFW UIs working for both platforms from the same code base with CLion.
idobai 11y ago
> I love linux/unix, but the problem always was with the lack of an awesome text editor cum IDE, yep there is eclipse but it is too clunky, I do not like sublime as it isn't FOSS (call me crazy), gedit took way too much memory, geany is fast and mean but the UI sucks plus functionality isn't that great. Atom & IntelliJ? "gedit took too much memory" - what? It eats like 5-10Mb...
Philipp__ 11y ago
Please, elaborate how VSCode changed the way we write code on Unix? I mean, repeat your statement out loud and ask yourself how big statement you just said. No way in hell how VSCode change the way we write code as much as you stated, no way even Atom did that. Like it or not TextMate came first, and soon after that Sublime Text took over. Yeah, like it or hate it, ST with it’s very well known default monokai theme changed most of the things in terms of GUI Editors for programming. I mean, what is going on, why people tend to blow VSCode out of the water about how good it is!? I mean, ok it is cool, has some really nifty features I would like to have in some X editor, but no way in hell it is as game-changing as people state. And I really can't see my self switching from Vim to VSCode. Even when I decide to use GUI Editor (I am not HC vim user, for some environments I use it, for others I don't), it is Sublime. I ditched Sublime for Atom since December, and on OS X, it is working very well. Not blazingly fast and smooth as Sublime, but it is far far better than before. But all in all I am not biting that Electron base for text editor. I mean ok, JS is cool, web is the future, flexible cross-platform solutions are the thing, but it still isn't comparable to native stuff. At least to me, it is getting there year by year but still a long way to go.
- thejvexperience 11y ago
  At work I write Scala and the IntelliJ Scala support is simply unbeatable. It's refactoring engine etc. is fully Scalafied -- when you paste Java code, there's even a "translate to Scala" function offered. I use a "vim mode" plugin that allows me to hope around with 25j and such. For my personal project (which is in Rust) I use Atom, which is new for me, but I find to be really impressive. Both its plugin system (which allow for all the extensibility and in my case Rust support) is fantastic, and I don't know where the complaints about speed come from (it's far lighter than IntelliJ, obviously). I've really been enjoying Atom when I do use it, and don't see why I'd switch to VSCode unless it had better support for Rust. But perhaps I'm missing something.
  - EugeneOZ 11y ago
    Have you tried this plugin: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=saviorisdead.RustyCode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=savioris... ?
dom96 11y ago
> gedit took way too much memory Can you elaborate?
- thewhitetulip 11y ago
  I am fine with it taking as much memory as it took. It is a great replacement for notepad, but that's what it is. wrong tool otherwise for a large project.
  - dom96 11y ago
    How much memory did it take? I assume that gedit would be very lightweight in terms of memory usage, maybe you hit a memory leak?
    - varjag 11y ago
      Oddly enough, on my machine a fresh gedit instance had bigger memory footprint than modestly tricked out emacs24.
mgkimsal 11y ago
> but for the people like me who don't or can't use terminal based editors, VSCode is quite literally the best. Sure, if you find fault with and don't use the 14 other options, the one you're left is, quite literally, the best.
flohofwoe 11y ago
So, can VSCode run in a terminal window, without graphical user interface, while ssh'ed into another machine somewhere around the globe over a shitty internet connection, editing a file that's a few hundred megabytes big? As long as that's not possible it's not even a contest ;) I like VSCode because of it's debugger plugin infrastructure, but let's not get silly (MS changing the way code is written on Linux).
- zem 11y ago
  what percentage of your coding time do you spend doing things like that? rhapsodising over your text editor is a long-standing unix tradition; no reason vscode fans cannot be part of that!
- jhasse 11y ago
  Yes, you can using `ssh -X` (except for the "in a terminal" part)
- unoti 11y ago
  > editing a file that's a few hundred megabytes big? As long as that's not possible it's not even a contest ;) I usually try to keep my source files and config files smaller than a few hundred megabytes. Sounds like you might need more specialized tools for your unusual approach to editing source code.
  - mercurial 11y ago
    A good code editor should let you inspect that 800MB XML file your customer sent you.
    - reitanqild 11y ago
      Back in the days before I learned about vim, Textmate was the choice for editing huge data files. Didn't ever understand people who used it for the things Notepad++ could do back then though.
- efdee 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
akio 11y ago
Noticeably missing from your list: IntelliJ and JetBrains's family of IDEs. I understand that VSCode has changed coding for you. But how has it changed anything for the 92.8%[0] of developers that don't use VSCode? [0] http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#tech...
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Intellij is an absolute beast of an IDE (in both senses, it's amazing and huge). I haven't loved working with a tool so much since Delphi 6, it has plugins for everything I want to do, they work really well, I can have a project open and use multiple languages seamlessly, it's extremely customisable. It's right up there with Linux in my "tools I wouldn't want to live without" category. That said as a lightweight alternative when I don't need an IDE I'm very much liking vscode, it's a strange world when my favourite linux editor is made by microsoft.
  - spdionis 11y ago
    The only bad part about Jetbrains is that no matter how much i've tried i can't use a text editor without feeling crippled. A big factor is probably that I started programming using Jetbrains tools (except some c++ in codeblocks before that). It's so awesome everything else just sucks. The problem is when i want to try some language that is not well supported by IntelliJ. No matter how cool the language is i get frustrated by editors like sublime/atom/emacs.
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      I know what you mean, I started programming back in the 80's as a kid so I spent about a decade without anything that looks like a modern IDE and since then I've used nothing but IDE's, I can live without an IDE but I seldom want to, it just suits my programming style.
      - spdionis 11y ago
thedz 11y ago
> gedit took way too much memory So instead you decided to use an electron based editor? Don't get me wrong, Atom and VSCode are both great. But "memory efficient" is not a word I'd use to describe either.
dubdubbub 11y ago
> SCode has done the thing that nobody expected MS to do, change the way code was written on Unix/Linux. ... > I love linux/unix, but the problem always was with the lack of an awesome text editor cum IDE I mean, its okay if you don't have experience with vim or emacs, but why spew uninformed bullshit when any semi-knowledgeable linux/unix dev knows that vim and emacs run laps around vscode, sublime, etc.
- thewhitetulip 11y ago
  Try building a large webapp in vi and then comment. These days what you do is more important than what you use to do it, use vi or emacs or some shitty text editor, but eventually you need a real IDE with a GUI, vi is great, I love it, but it isn't the thing to be used for a large web app. >ut why spew uninformed bullshit when any semi-knowledgeable linux/unix dev knows that vim and emacs run laps around vscode, sublime, etc Because the rest of the entire world doesn't share your opinion. if you really use vi for a large scale project then salute to you! I am fine with vscode, I want to get things done rather than learn my editor (read spend valuable time learning nooks and corners and the million shorcuts which I'd have rather spent on building my application product or startup) I even wrote a short tutorial about writing webapps in golang: http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook/ http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook... all thanks to vscode + go plugin
  - dubdubbub 11y ago
    > Try building a large webapp in vi and then comment. I've built several using mostly vim as the editor. > These days what you do is more important than what you use to do it, use vi or emacs or some shitty text editor I mean that's a cute opinion, but both vim and emacs are much more powerful and flexible than eclipse, intellij, visual studio or other similar crap. > but it isn't the thing to be used for a large web app. Why not? > I am fine with vscode, I want to get things done rather than learn my editor (read spend valuable time learning nooks and corners and the million shorcuts which I'd have rather spent on building my application product or startup) You probably spend 100x more time making shitposts on HN and other forums than it would take to learn vim and emacs.
anon4 11y ago
What about Code::Blocks and KDevelop?
Skinney 11y ago
VSCode doesn't even change the way code was written on Mac or Windows. Let me turn the question around. What does VSCode do that Sublime, Atom, Emacs and Vim doesn't? Nothing. That is not to say that VSCode is bad. It's a decent editor. But the only reason I found Atom and VSCode to be interesting at all, was that way more people know Javascript than ELisp or VimScript, and so I figuere that the quality and quantity of plugins will be better on VSCode or Atom in time compared to the other two editors. The switch to Atom was actually pretty simple. Many Emacs shortcuts still worked, and setting up a linter and multiple cursors was easy. Another thing is that there are GUI versions of both Vim and Emacs. You don't, however, have a console version of VSCode, which means you can't use it over SSH. This isn't that big of a deal for some people (maybe even most), but for sysadmins logging in to a server to do some work, access to their editor of choice would be great. The problem with your statement, and why you receive downvotes, is that you reveal that you really don't know what you're talking about.
- dingo_bat 11y ago
  >VSCode doesn't even change the way code was written on Mac or Windows. That's probably because those two platforms have already had superior tools for a long time. On Linux, vim reigns supreme. So it is easier to revolutionize code editing on Linux
  - Skinney 11y ago
    All three platforms have had access to Vim, Emacs, LightTable and Sublime. VSCode brings nothing new to the table other than Javascript as a plugin-language. The fact that you think that VSCode is revolutionary compared to vim, only displays your ignorance. Vim can do the exact same things VSCode can, and it has been able to do so for quite a bit longer.
polymeris 11y ago
> I do not like sublime as it isn't FOSS VS Code is not FOSS, either, I believe? [EDIT: Wait... it is open source. Must have missed that announcement] I do like it a lot, though. KomodoEdit is pretty neat, as well. Even though it's closer to a full IDE, it feels very responsive. If either VS Code or KomodoEdit added something like paredit, I'd switch to them.
giancarlostoro 11y ago
If you're wondering why the downvotes, the great editor war is the reason. I think your comment is valid, but what you could of said which makes the most sense to me is: VSCode has changed the way you yourself code on Unix / Linux as opposed to the way "EVERYONE" codes on Linux, if everyone dropped Vi(m) and Emacs for VSCode then that would speak volumes. I agree with you on Atom, though I've encountered an odd issue with VS Code where it freezes up completely on me, not sure what that's about.
TheRealDunkirk 11y ago
All the responses to this comment seem to center around putting in many, many hours of work to get used to Vim or Emacs. I can't find a single comment about the rejection of Sublime Text because it costs $60. That's the usual complaint against it. To which I say: If you're a professional programmer, how many hours of your time does that come to, for an editor that will make you more productive for years? As someone who got through engineering school on green screens and vi, I eventually cobbled together a massive collection of Vim plugins... to make it work, essentially like ST, with a side bar, tabs, fuzzy searching, and all of that. Once I discovered ST, I was happy to pay the measly $60 whole dollars for a license which I could run on all 3 desktop platforms, across half a dozen computers. VSCode magically fits this one narrow set of definitions to reshape the field of coding on Linux and Mac? Are you even serious, or is this just trolling? You're going to let the fact that it's closed source remove it from your list? I obstinately ran Linux on the desktop for 19 years, but I know a good, pragmatic deal when I see it, open source or not.

mjt0229 11y ago

Really? VSCode has already transformed the way code was written on Unix/Linux? I beg to differ. 10 years ago (when I discovered Eclipse, not sure when it was originally released), Eclipse was a staggering leap forward for Java programming. I'm no Eclipse fan, but I don't think that VSCode has already changed the world in the way that Eclipse did, and certainly not in its short lifespan.

Analemma_ 11y ago
I think what the parent meant was that VSC (along with Atom, and to lesser extent SublimeText) is a good example of "the middle way" that is rapidly gaining popularity. First we had console editors, but they weren't powerful enough, especially for newer languages/frameworks. Then we had full IDEs (VS/Eclipse/IntelliJ), but they got to be slow and clunky. Now the trend is toward "enhanced text editors" (VSC/Atom/ST): editors that can have modular plugin functionality and interact with the console so you don't lose any of its versatility. They're usually faster and more lightweight than IDEs but keep most of what you need. The parent is saying that Eclipse was the flagship of "Generation 2" and VSC is for "Generation 3" And remember, no one is saying you have to use these programs. Console editors and IDEs will still be here. This is another option for people who want it, which has turned out to be a lot of people.
- mjt0229 11y ago
  What I'm taking issue with is the description of VSC as "changing the way we code on Unix/Linux". Given your interpretation, Atom and SublimeText and other tools predate VSC and fill much the same role. So I don't see VSC as being transformative in that way. That's not to say it might not be a nice tool, but it's not a revolution either.
  - Analemma_ 11y ago
    I understand; I just think you're being a little harsh on the OP, even if their language was a bit exuberant. They said they tried Atom and found it too slow, so if VSC was the first "3rd gen editor" (a term I just made up) that was usable in their workflow, then for them, it is a revolution. Assume good faith when comments are ambiguous :)
    - thewhitetulip 11y ago
      Yep, that's what I meant, earlier I didn't have such an awesome text editor with git inbuilt, eclipse is clunky and stuff, vi and emacs are too hard to learn, didn't have that much time to learn every small stuff that vi can do, so vscode changed the way I write code, and for most of the "new" developers, it will change the way they write code, gone are the days when you are staring at the screen wondering what was that shortcut. at least for developing webapps
      - mercurial 11y ago
        Eclipse is not a code editor. It's an IDE. It offers a bazillion things out of the box (a lot of it that VS doesn't do without Resharper), but you're going to pay the price in terms of performance and RAM, sure.
      - mjt0229 11y ago
        I would strongly suggest that at some point in your career, you take the time to learn either vi or Emacs, even if you still use VS Code everything.

x5n1 11y ago

I use Visual Code for Golang, for everything else Linux has other stuff that's better imo. Like Netbeans and PyCharm. Seems like I should be using it for TypeScript.

ausjke 11y ago
what about node.js development?
- x5n1 11y ago
  netbeans

zxcvcxz 11y ago

How do people put up with VS Code and laggy text input though? I used it on Win10 and Linux and both occasions there is noticeably lag when typing.I look at the screen while I type most of the time and this lag makes coding impossible for me because I like to see what I'm writing in real time. I've noticed this happen especially on big projects/files. Also, sometimes the auto complete popup is very slow to appear and causes lag. I don't use many GUI text editors and have not compared VS to Atom/sublime, but for me this is just unacceptable.

KirinDave 11y ago
It's not laggy for me on any device I can run it on. I regularly use IntelliJ Idea and that feels sticky and slow compared to the input of VSCode.
nix0n 11y ago
For me, Kate was the solution to this since it uses text completion not code completion.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

ultramancool 11y ago

Atom was around before VSCode and they feel roughly equivalent to me, no? They're both web browser based even... I'm a heavy IDE and Emacs guy though, so perhaps I'm missing something.

mjt0229 11y ago
Agreed. I don't see anything in VSCode that's not present in any of the vast array of alternatives. But then again, I live in IntelliJ and Emacs land. I don't mind Atom but don't really use it for anything. Light Table might deserve the term "transformative", but I didn't find it usable enough to rely on.
mrnd 11y ago
I've been using both Atom and VSCode over the past few months and gradually got to the point where I just prefer VSCode. It's hard to pinpoint a specific reason, but it feels faster and a little more polished.
devy 11y ago
> Atom was around before VSCode Nope. Visual Studio Code was created before Atom.[1] Although both VS Code and Atom are based on Electron[1] and are both Chrome-based. VS Code does seem to be stealing Atom's thunder as what they say [1] [1] https://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-seems-to-be-lossing-contributions-and-users-due-to-third-party-electron-based-ides/24901 https://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-seems-to-be-lossing-contribut...
- abritishguy 11y ago
  Electron (formerly called Atom-shell) was created for Atom. The source you cited even says this!
  - devy 11y ago
    Read this particular comment in that link. https://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-seems-to-be-lossing-contributions-and-users-due-to-third-party-electron-based-ides/24901/3 https://discuss.atom.io/t/atom-seems-to-be-lossing-contribut...

antiffan 11y ago

What was lacking in Atom for you?

thewhitetulip 11y ago
it starts with the speed, atom is clunky and slow. If I do not have any other alternative them Atom is good enough, but geany and vscode are way way better than atom. I'd rather do all fancy plugin stuff of atom using python and use geany than use Atom because of its slow speed. I wonder why anyone isn't doing anything for that considering github is the company being atom and that vscode and atom both are based on electron yet vscode is so damn faster than atom
jhasse 11y ago
It's buggy. Plugins break all the time. Also: Doesn't ask me to save my unsaved files when I close the editor. Sublime Text called this feature "hotexit", but in Atom there's no way to disable it.
blacksmith_tb 11y ago
Atom is great in many ways, and I personally don't have any major complaints about speed, but it disappoints me in lots of little ways. For example, on two different machines, when I upgraded to 1.7.0, Atom failed to reopen my open tabs - they all became 'untitled'. And a couple of them were unsaved (my fault, of course, but I hadn't ever been burned by Sublime doing the same drill).

Mikeb85 11y ago

Ummm, no. VS Code is a decent editor, nothing more. It certainly doesn't transform the way code is written on Unix/Linux. Vim and Emacs are still superior if you want to put the time in, and both have non-terminal interfaces. They can also be both customized to be whatever you want them to be, there's not really a limit to their functionality except what plugins are already written. Ditto for Atom, though of course, it does seem to be more web based for the moment (though Atom does have great plugins for Go, Nim, and I'm sure a bunch of other languages). In the grand scheme of things, tools like compilers, debuggers, interpreters, other command line tools (like completion servers), etc..., matter more than editors anyway. Edit - for the record, VS Code seems great. But it's not revolutionary.

thewhitetulip 11y ago
That's what, gone are the days when we'd spend hours and hours to learn the little little ways of vi and the myriad functions in emacs. Now we need to get things done, can't afford to sit down and study the entire functions of vi and emacs. I don't mean to troll but after switching to vscode and the go plugin I learned go webdev and wrote this small intro book, http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook/ http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook... That is the power of vscode, it provided a good enough way to play with code, yes not outright innovation, but an awesome text editor nonetheless.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  Atom has a great Go plugin: linting, context aware completion, fixes code style on save, etc..., all powered by Go's command line tools. I'm not saying Vim and Emacs are the be-all (I program mostly in R, so RStudio is my main tool), only that VS Code hasn't changed anything fundamentally. It's just a good editor.
  - jagger27 11y ago
    Sublime Text has GoSublime as well.
- 11y ago

krzyk 11y ago

If you liked Eclipse, then you should take a look at IntelliJ IDEA (and its companion IDEs), they are a leap forward from Eclipse.

levemi 11y ago
Agreed, IntelliJ IDEA is so good I can't really use other editors for projects. For editing regular files outside of a project I still use vim or TextEdit/Notepad. I prefer Intellij so much I use CLion instead of Xcode on OS X and Visual Studio on Windows 10.
- rhodysurf 11y ago
  I didnt think Clion worked with MSVC?
  - levemi 11y ago
    It probably doesn't. I use MinGW on Windows. Once Windows 10 adds the announced linux support I guess I'll start using that instead. :) I can build .exe's that run fine on Windows this way and executables that run on OS X (using the X-Code supplied compiler and build tools that CLion depends on for OS X). I can get qt, wxWidgets and GLFW UIs working for both platforms from the same code base with CLion.

idobai 11y ago

> I love linux/unix, but the problem always was with the lack of an awesome text editor cum IDE, yep there is eclipse but it is too clunky, I do not like sublime as it isn't FOSS (call me crazy), gedit took way too much memory, geany is fast and mean but the UI sucks plus functionality isn't that great. Atom & IntelliJ? "gedit took too much memory" - what? It eats like 5-10Mb...

Philipp__ 11y ago

Please, elaborate how VSCode changed the way we write code on Unix? I mean, repeat your statement out loud and ask yourself how big statement you just said. No way in hell how VSCode change the way we write code as much as you stated, no way even Atom did that. Like it or not TextMate came first, and soon after that Sublime Text took over. Yeah, like it or hate it, ST with it’s very well known default monokai theme changed most of the things in terms of GUI Editors for programming. I mean, what is going on, why people tend to blow VSCode out of the water about how good it is!? I mean, ok it is cool, has some really nifty features I would like to have in some X editor, but no way in hell it is as game-changing as people state. And I really can't see my self switching from Vim to VSCode. Even when I decide to use GUI Editor (I am not HC vim user, for some environments I use it, for others I don't), it is Sublime. I ditched Sublime for Atom since December, and on OS X, it is working very well. Not blazingly fast and smooth as Sublime, but it is far far better than before. But all in all I am not biting that Electron base for text editor. I mean ok, JS is cool, web is the future, flexible cross-platform solutions are the thing, but it still isn't comparable to native stuff. At least to me, it is getting there year by year but still a long way to go.

thejvexperience 11y ago
At work I write Scala and the IntelliJ Scala support is simply unbeatable. It's refactoring engine etc. is fully Scalafied -- when you paste Java code, there's even a "translate to Scala" function offered. I use a "vim mode" plugin that allows me to hope around with 25j and such. For my personal project (which is in Rust) I use Atom, which is new for me, but I find to be really impressive. Both its plugin system (which allow for all the extensibility and in my case Rust support) is fantastic, and I don't know where the complaints about speed come from (it's far lighter than IntelliJ, obviously). I've really been enjoying Atom when I do use it, and don't see why I'd switch to VSCode unless it had better support for Rust. But perhaps I'm missing something.
- EugeneOZ 11y ago
  Have you tried this plugin: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=saviorisdead.RustyCode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=savioris... ?

dom96 11y ago

> gedit took way too much memory Can you elaborate?

thewhitetulip 11y ago
I am fine with it taking as much memory as it took. It is a great replacement for notepad, but that's what it is. wrong tool otherwise for a large project.
- dom96 11y ago
  How much memory did it take? I assume that gedit would be very lightweight in terms of memory usage, maybe you hit a memory leak?
  - varjag 11y ago
    Oddly enough, on my machine a fresh gedit instance had bigger memory footprint than modestly tricked out emacs24.

mgkimsal 11y ago

> but for the people like me who don't or can't use terminal based editors, VSCode is quite literally the best. Sure, if you find fault with and don't use the 14 other options, the one you're left is, quite literally, the best.

flohofwoe 11y ago

So, can VSCode run in a terminal window, without graphical user interface, while ssh'ed into another machine somewhere around the globe over a shitty internet connection, editing a file that's a few hundred megabytes big? As long as that's not possible it's not even a contest ;) I like VSCode because of it's debugger plugin infrastructure, but let's not get silly (MS changing the way code is written on Linux).

zem 11y ago
what percentage of your coding time do you spend doing things like that? rhapsodising over your text editor is a long-standing unix tradition; no reason vscode fans cannot be part of that!
jhasse 11y ago
Yes, you can using `ssh -X` (except for the "in a terminal" part)
unoti 11y ago
> editing a file that's a few hundred megabytes big? As long as that's not possible it's not even a contest ;) I usually try to keep my source files and config files smaller than a few hundred megabytes. Sounds like you might need more specialized tools for your unusual approach to editing source code.
- mercurial 11y ago
  A good code editor should let you inspect that 800MB XML file your customer sent you.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Back in the days before I learned about vim, Textmate was the choice for editing huge data files. Didn't ever understand people who used it for the things Notepad++ could do back then though.
efdee 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

akio 11y ago

Noticeably missing from your list: IntelliJ and JetBrains's family of IDEs. I understand that VSCode has changed coding for you. But how has it changed anything for the 92.8%[0] of developers that don't use VSCode? [0] http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#tech...

noir_lord 11y ago
Intellij is an absolute beast of an IDE (in both senses, it's amazing and huge). I haven't loved working with a tool so much since Delphi 6, it has plugins for everything I want to do, they work really well, I can have a project open and use multiple languages seamlessly, it's extremely customisable. It's right up there with Linux in my "tools I wouldn't want to live without" category. That said as a lightweight alternative when I don't need an IDE I'm very much liking vscode, it's a strange world when my favourite linux editor is made by microsoft.
- spdionis 11y ago
  The only bad part about Jetbrains is that no matter how much i've tried i can't use a text editor without feeling crippled. A big factor is probably that I started programming using Jetbrains tools (except some c++ in codeblocks before that). It's so awesome everything else just sucks. The problem is when i want to try some language that is not well supported by IntelliJ. No matter how cool the language is i get frustrated by editors like sublime/atom/emacs.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    I know what you mean, I started programming back in the 80's as a kid so I spent about a decade without anything that looks like a modern IDE and since then I've used nothing but IDE's, I can live without an IDE but I seldom want to, it just suits my programming style.
    - spdionis 11y ago

thedz 11y ago

> gedit took way too much memory So instead you decided to use an electron based editor? Don't get me wrong, Atom and VSCode are both great. But "memory efficient" is not a word I'd use to describe either.

dubdubbub 11y ago

> SCode has done the thing that nobody expected MS to do, change the way code was written on Unix/Linux. ... > I love linux/unix, but the problem always was with the lack of an awesome text editor cum IDE I mean, its okay if you don't have experience with vim or emacs, but why spew uninformed bullshit when any semi-knowledgeable linux/unix dev knows that vim and emacs run laps around vscode, sublime, etc.

thewhitetulip 11y ago
Try building a large webapp in vi and then comment. These days what you do is more important than what you use to do it, use vi or emacs or some shitty text editor, but eventually you need a real IDE with a GUI, vi is great, I love it, but it isn't the thing to be used for a large web app. >ut why spew uninformed bullshit when any semi-knowledgeable linux/unix dev knows that vim and emacs run laps around vscode, sublime, etc Because the rest of the entire world doesn't share your opinion. if you really use vi for a large scale project then salute to you! I am fine with vscode, I want to get things done rather than learn my editor (read spend valuable time learning nooks and corners and the million shorcuts which I'd have rather spent on building my application product or startup) I even wrote a short tutorial about writing webapps in golang: http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook/ http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook... all thanks to vscode + go plugin
- dubdubbub 11y ago
  > Try building a large webapp in vi and then comment. I've built several using mostly vim as the editor. > These days what you do is more important than what you use to do it, use vi or emacs or some shitty text editor I mean that's a cute opinion, but both vim and emacs are much more powerful and flexible than eclipse, intellij, visual studio or other similar crap. > but it isn't the thing to be used for a large web app. Why not? > I am fine with vscode, I want to get things done rather than learn my editor (read spend valuable time learning nooks and corners and the million shorcuts which I'd have rather spent on building my application product or startup) You probably spend 100x more time making shitposts on HN and other forums than it would take to learn vim and emacs.

anon4 11y ago

What about Code::Blocks and KDevelop?

Skinney 11y ago

VSCode doesn't even change the way code was written on Mac or Windows. Let me turn the question around. What does VSCode do that Sublime, Atom, Emacs and Vim doesn't? Nothing. That is not to say that VSCode is bad. It's a decent editor. But the only reason I found Atom and VSCode to be interesting at all, was that way more people know Javascript than ELisp or VimScript, and so I figuere that the quality and quantity of plugins will be better on VSCode or Atom in time compared to the other two editors. The switch to Atom was actually pretty simple. Many Emacs shortcuts still worked, and setting up a linter and multiple cursors was easy. Another thing is that there are GUI versions of both Vim and Emacs. You don't, however, have a console version of VSCode, which means you can't use it over SSH. This isn't that big of a deal for some people (maybe even most), but for sysadmins logging in to a server to do some work, access to their editor of choice would be great. The problem with your statement, and why you receive downvotes, is that you reveal that you really don't know what you're talking about.

dingo_bat 11y ago
>VSCode doesn't even change the way code was written on Mac or Windows. That's probably because those two platforms have already had superior tools for a long time. On Linux, vim reigns supreme. So it is easier to revolutionize code editing on Linux
- Skinney 11y ago
  All three platforms have had access to Vim, Emacs, LightTable and Sublime. VSCode brings nothing new to the table other than Javascript as a plugin-language. The fact that you think that VSCode is revolutionary compared to vim, only displays your ignorance. Vim can do the exact same things VSCode can, and it has been able to do so for quite a bit longer.

polymeris 11y ago

> I do not like sublime as it isn't FOSS VS Code is not FOSS, either, I believe? [EDIT: Wait... it is open source. Must have missed that announcement] I do like it a lot, though. KomodoEdit is pretty neat, as well. Even though it's closer to a full IDE, it feels very responsive. If either VS Code or KomodoEdit added something like paredit, I'd switch to them.

giancarlostoro 11y ago

If you're wondering why the downvotes, the great editor war is the reason. I think your comment is valid, but what you could of said which makes the most sense to me is: VSCode has changed the way you yourself code on Unix / Linux as opposed to the way "EVERYONE" codes on Linux, if everyone dropped Vi(m) and Emacs for VSCode then that would speak volumes. I agree with you on Atom, though I've encountered an odd issue with VS Code where it freezes up completely on me, not sure what that's about.

TheRealDunkirk 11y ago

All the responses to this comment seem to center around putting in many, many hours of work to get used to Vim or Emacs. I can't find a single comment about the rejection of Sublime Text because it costs $60. That's the usual complaint against it. To which I say: If you're a professional programmer, how many hours of your time does that come to, for an editor that will make you more productive for years? As someone who got through engineering school on green screens and vi, I eventually cobbled together a massive collection of Vim plugins... to make it work, essentially like ST, with a side bar, tabs, fuzzy searching, and all of that. Once I discovered ST, I was happy to pay the measly $60 whole dollars for a license which I could run on all 3 desktop platforms, across half a dozen computers. VSCode magically fits this one narrow set of definitions to reshape the field of coding on Linux and Mac? Are you even serious, or is this just trolling? You're going to let the fact that it's closed source remove it from your list? I obstinately ran Linux on the desktop for 19 years, but I know a good, pragmatic deal when I see it, open source or not.