4 ms·

I recently switched over to Visual Studio Code and even though I previously had a bit experience with it, switching over was frustrating. It takes time to chang

I recently switched over to Visual Studio Code and even though I previously had a bit experience with it, switching over was frustrating. It takes time to change your work flow, to set up the IDE as needed, to get plugins and what not fine-tuned. Now I can't imagine working without Visual Studio Code because all those seemingly little features add up and what do you mean I can seamlessly use Git to manage my code or easily rename variables and functions without breaking stuff WHAT

oblio 9y ago
> seemingly little features add up You can say that again. These really polished software products such as Microsoft Office (don't laugh!), IntelliJ, Visual Studio Code, 7-Zip, Chrome, Firefox have tons of hidden features you can easily miss and that have tons of thought put into them. For example I started using Visual Studio Code and I accidentally clicked things in the status bar. Did you know that the text there is actually buttons? They take you to the command bar, where they have a pre-filtered list of commands which set their respective options (!!!). That's power user UX Nirvana, embedding discoverability and teaching in a subtle way that doesn't interfere with your normal workflow. You don't know what you're doing? You click the menus and your life is just fine. You read the Welcome page and maybe change some user settings, with full auto completion (!!!), or maybe you click around the app, and like a modern game with a physics engine, the app reacts to your action, doesn't just sit there like a slab of rock.
bunderbunder 9y ago
I'm a fairly light user of VSCode, so I may be wrong here, but the integration goes even deeper in Visual Studio. It lets you view a pull request's changes right there in a standard IDE window, so that you can get full code navigation features during code review, including stuff like peeking the docstring or implementation of any functions the code references. Or, if you notice something amiss while reviewing your changes before submitting a pull request, you can just make the change, re-run tests, and commit, without ever leaving the diff viewer. Or being able to just toggle gitblame annotations on and off right there in the editor. It's nothing worth switching platforms or programming languages over, but, since switching away from .NET and seeing the gulf between the level of seamlessness you get out of Visual Studio and what's available in other IDEs, I can now see why they've come to have such a poor reputation. Visual Studio isn't exactly lightweight, but it manages to pack in enough cool tricks to justify itself. (Until you install ReSharper. Then it becomes as memory-hungry and unstable as everyone else.)

oblio 9y ago

> seemingly little features add up You can say that again. These really polished software products such as Microsoft Office (don't laugh!), IntelliJ, Visual Studio Code, 7-Zip, Chrome, Firefox have tons of hidden features you can easily miss and that have tons of thought put into them. For example I started using Visual Studio Code and I accidentally clicked things in the status bar. Did you know that the text there is actually buttons? They take you to the command bar, where they have a pre-filtered list of commands which set their respective options (!!!). That's power user UX Nirvana, embedding discoverability and teaching in a subtle way that doesn't interfere with your normal workflow. You don't know what you're doing? You click the menus and your life is just fine. You read the Welcome page and maybe change some user settings, with full auto completion (!!!), or maybe you click around the app, and like a modern game with a physics engine, the app reacts to your action, doesn't just sit there like a slab of rock.

bunderbunder 9y ago

I'm a fairly light user of VSCode, so I may be wrong here, but the integration goes even deeper in Visual Studio. It lets you view a pull request's changes right there in a standard IDE window, so that you can get full code navigation features during code review, including stuff like peeking the docstring or implementation of any functions the code references. Or, if you notice something amiss while reviewing your changes before submitting a pull request, you can just make the change, re-run tests, and commit, without ever leaving the diff viewer. Or being able to just toggle gitblame annotations on and off right there in the editor. It's nothing worth switching platforms or programming languages over, but, since switching away from .NET and seeing the gulf between the level of seamlessness you get out of Visual Studio and what's available in other IDEs, I can now see why they've come to have such a poor reputation. Visual Studio isn't exactly lightweight, but it manages to pack in enough cool tricks to justify itself. (Until you install ReSharper. Then it becomes as memory-hungry and unstable as everyone else.)