4 ms·

As someone who is literally building a IDE in Electron, the biggest reason is JavaScript itself. If you look to the stackoverflow yearly overview, you can obser

by whazor 10y ago

As someone who is literally building a IDE in Electron, the biggest reason is JavaScript itself. If you look to the stackoverflow yearly overview, you can observe that JavaScript is currently the most used language. Also do not forget about all the integrations you could do with for example devtools. An additional feature is that you can run the IDE in the web browser, so that you can have an online code editor. Think for example about configuration files on the Azure website, or a cloud IDE with multiple people using it. Honestly I think Visual Studio Code is not slow enough for people to switch. A long web page is very similar to a long code document, all the keywords are just span's with a colour. Furthermore, it is not like Visual Studio or IntelliJ are known for low CPU or smoothness.

cr0sh 10y ago
I personally wish Github would incorporate a full-feature Electron-based IDE into their system; they do have an online editor, but it is fairly simplistic. Good enough for quick edits, but I wouldn't want to dev in it (then again, I started my professional career in software development sitting in front of a VT220 using a line-based editor; it got bad enough that me and my mentor had a "contest" on who could write a better full-screen code editor - honestly, we both won in a way).
haldean 10y ago
The SO survey (while super interesting!) conflates "most used" with "most asked about on Stack Overflow"; I'm skeptical of anyone who claims to know which programming language is the most popular. The TIOBE index, which has its own problems, has Javascript coming in 8th, with the top 4 being Java, C, C++ and C#; my experiences and my confirmation bias suggest that's more accurate. https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
- whazor 10y ago
  I agree that tiobe is more established, especially as they look to companies being involved and to the job market. One of the reasons why I am interested in Javascript is that many people are learning it, even non-developers. Think about people without education.
  - shakna 10y ago
    > Think about people without education. I don't want people without education building my IDEs and other software I might rely on. The VS Code team have done a great job, and this bug will die. But, I'd say it's more in spite of the platform, than because of it.
cpburns2009 10y ago
JavaScript is literally the reason I would avoid a platform. It's only the de facto language for the web because you can't directly run any other language across different browsers. With web apps being so popular, having a low barrier to entry, and being "quicker" to provide half-assed cross platform apps, it's no wonder JavaScript is technically so popular. Hopefully, web assembly or something similar can change that. But then again, web browsers weren't meant to host proper applications.

by whazor 10y ago

cr0sh 10y ago

I personally wish Github would incorporate a full-feature Electron-based IDE into their system; they do have an online editor, but it is fairly simplistic. Good enough for quick edits, but I wouldn't want to dev in it (then again, I started my professional career in software development sitting in front of a VT220 using a line-based editor; it got bad enough that me and my mentor had a "contest" on who could write a better full-screen code editor - honestly, we both won in a way).

haldean 10y ago

The SO survey (while super interesting!) conflates "most used" with "most asked about on Stack Overflow"; I'm skeptical of anyone who claims to know which programming language is the most popular. The TIOBE index, which has its own problems, has Javascript coming in 8th, with the top 4 being Java, C, C++ and C#; my experiences and my confirmation bias suggest that's more accurate. https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

whazor 10y ago
I agree that tiobe is more established, especially as they look to companies being involved and to the job market. One of the reasons why I am interested in Javascript is that many people are learning it, even non-developers. Think about people without education.
- shakna 10y ago
  > Think about people without education. I don't want people without education building my IDEs and other software I might rely on. The VS Code team have done a great job, and this bug will die. But, I'd say it's more in spite of the platform, than because of it.

cpburns2009 10y ago

JavaScript is literally the reason I would avoid a platform. It's only the de facto language for the web because you can't directly run any other language across different browsers. With web apps being so popular, having a low barrier to entry, and being "quicker" to provide half-assed cross platform apps, it's no wonder JavaScript is technically so popular. Hopefully, web assembly or something similar can change that. But then again, web browsers weren't meant to host proper applications.