8 ms·

I really feel VSCode is lining up to be the new goto IDE across multiple languages. Slightly less (directly) extensible than Emacs but still feels it can do pr

I really feel VSCode is lining up to be the new goto IDE across multiple languages. Slightly less (directly) extensible than Emacs but still feels it can do pretty much everything that needs doing, plus way nicer & friendlier default UI.

chimprich 8y ago
VSCode is the first editor I've seen that has made me think maybe I'll move away from Emacs at some point. I think a fully tooled-up Emacs setup in the hands of an experienced user is still faster and more powerful but I do wonder if Emacs will be able to develop fast enough to keep up with the cutting edge.
- thecryusofiran 8y ago
  As an Emacs user I'm mostly "afraid" of VSCode getting so popular that people will make cool tools targeting VSCode only. Like, it'll become the Chrome of text editors.
  - simias 8y ago
    Emacs hasn't been really mainstream in quite a while and it's still actively maintained and improved upon. I'm not too worried. A small-ish skilled community is enough to keep the project going. What's VSCode's market share anyway? Is it really that big? I've never used it personally and I had no idea it was so popular.
    - kryptiskt 8y ago
      It has become really popular: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#technology-most-popular-development-environments https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#technology-m...
    - pulisse 8y ago
      > A small-ish skilled community is enough to keep the project going. The trends of the last few years are worrisome, though, particularly as regards the pool of developers who can work on Emacs core (the part written in C). Right now there's only one dev who's in a position to do non-trivial work on the display engine, and he also took on primary maintainer responsibilities a couple of years ago. When he burns out, the project is going to stall, hard. Stefan Monnier, who was maintainer for most of the past decade, perceived this trend very clearly and was vocal in trying to recruit new talent. He didn't get much cooperation from other core devs.
      - drieddust 8y ago
        It feels like Emacs Developers are actively tries to shoo away modernization and people who do not want to put in hours trying to actively learn just Emacs. At one point I tried using Emacs for everything but it didn't work out for me. Now I still use it but only for tasks management and coding. Unless you want to spend hours of your time customizing it and then a lot of other person also does the same customization. This just ends up wasting a lot of time overall. For me Emacs lacks the following and I think others will have the same feeling: Obscure Terminology Documentation is all geeky with terms like frames, META, kill ring etc. This creates unnecessary friction for a new user. Basics of ELISP can be learned rather quickly but trying to apply it while grokking the tersely written documentation is just discouraging. Sensible Defaults Simple things CTRL-C, CTRL-V does not work out of the box. Mobile Interface It is an error not to provide a facility to interface with mobile devices natively. I get full Emacs can be invoked via termux on any Android device. However, it is just unusable and irritating. Orgazly and likes also not very useful.
        simias 8y ago
        Well the problem is that people caring about Emacs have learned a long time ago what a kill-ring, the point, the cursor and meta mean in the context of Emacs. In its defence, a lot of that predates modern user interface conventions. Changing this lingo would probably make it more approachable for newcomers but it would confuse experienced users. On top of that you can be sure that not all elisp out there will be updated quickly (if ever) and you end up with two different words for the same things in different docs which is not exactly a win for anybody. Beyond that Emacs's docs are unparalleled in the editor world as far as I know, you can explore pretty much any functionality by calling "describe-key", "describe-mode" etc... Even decades later very few (if any) editor can rival the flexibility and self-documenting nature of Emacs. Regarding key bindings I agree that it's definitely a pain point for newcommers, it's just too different from the modern standard (while not necessarily being better. C-_ for undo? I got used to it but it's hard to defend). Unfortunately making a complete new set of bindings that would play nice with 3rd party packages is probably very difficult.
    - axelrosen 8y ago
      It's just my impression, but for the new generation of developers "born" into a js-first world it's pretty much the primary choice. And again I don't have numbers but it does seem like the new generation is MUUCH larger and much more active on mainstream social media. Hacker news must seem like what slashdot seems to me. I can see a situation where 0 users switch to VSCode and in a few years it still has, say, 80% of market share, just by getting all the new ones.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        > And again I don't have numbers but it does seem like the new generation is MUUCH larger and much more active on mainstream social media. Hacker news must seem like what slashdot seems to me. Part of it can be attributed to growth. If the population of programmers grows by 100% every 5 years (an estimate I remember reading somewhere), then at any given time, half of the workforce has at most 5 years of experience. This explains why our industry seems to be so full of "js-first" developers - because in fact, it is.
  - SmirkingRevenge 8y ago
    Editor trends seem to fairly volatile. Textmate was the new shiny favorite until it wasn't. Sublime was the new shiny favorite till it wasn't. Atom was the new shiny favorite... etc.
    - PurpleRamen 8y ago
      Those had all legit flaws which prevents wider usage, like being limited to one platform, being commercial or slow or dead... They all lakc in concept, because they are editors first, and not much of an IDE. VS Code is the first who actually avoids all the flaws. It's flexible, yet still quite fast, relative tame on RAM, yet full of IDE-features, running on all platforms and cost you just some privacy if you don't know about the data-collecting. Additionally, it sparked the LSP a movement which is benefitial for all editors/IDEs, and we will see how much more will come from this. So even if VS Code itself will lost traction, it's heritage might prevail. But overall the specs so far look very healthy for a project in that realm, and chances are good that it will stay for a while.
- rataata_jr 8y ago
  With support for language server protocol we can have the best of both worlds.
- purple_ducks 8y ago
  Well hopefully with the advent & oncoming onslaught of Language Server Protocol, most IDEs can spend their time on UI/UX polish. ...Obligatory mention of Xi editor: https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor ...
threatofrain 8y ago
I would say that IntelliSense is the differentiating magic of VS Code. Otherwise it's just an awesome editor.
kgwxd 8y ago
RIP battery though.
- cjohansson 8y ago
  Yeah Visual Studio Code drains battery, CPU and memory. Emacs is extremely resource-efficient, it's probably around thousand times more optimized than Visual Studio Code
  - baldfat 8y ago
    > it's probably around thousand times more optimized than Visual Studio Code I am not saying that VS Code is everyone's answer and choice but VS Code is resource friendly enough. Who cares about the resource difference between EMACS and VS Code in real world practicality? I know people love to bash anything electron but it really isn't anything to worry about when programing with anything that is 6 years old or newer. VS Code is immediate and responsive on my Dell at work (10 years old) (I refuse to give it up even though I have several more computers but everyone needs a spare computer) what do we need besides that in terms of resource-efficient now a days? I know that it use to be a big deal and I propose that its a non-factor these days.
    - hellofunk 8y ago
      I can use Emacs and write C++ and compile often and go 15 hours on a single Mac Book pro battery charge. That’s why some people use Emacs.
    - nothrabannosir 8y ago
      > Who cares about the resource difference between EMACS and VS Code in real world practicality? I literally use different apps on battery vs wall power: wall: Firefox, Slack, VSCode battery: Safari, mail, Emacs The difference is clear as night & day. Mac OS X has a tab in Activity Monitor where you can observe energy impact of different apps, and it consistently reports Electron apps as... psychotic. An order of magnitude (10x) more intensive than their native counterparts.
zimablue 8y ago
VSCode has very much opposing philosophy to Emacs. It's a Microsoft product and it shows, they don't have standard concept of buffers/windows, so trying to do customization is ugly. For example, you can't easily implement a shell which moves around the windows and can also sit on a side, because windows and sidebars are totally different concepts in the code. VSCode depresses the hell out of me, it's almost a summary of the bad things of open source. Open source but most people will download it with spyware Open source but not really built as a nice platform to be meaningfully extended Open source and controlled by a single company Open source and used cynically as a wedge to pull developers into your orbit Open source and not at all written from an extensible mindset, just enough extensibility to trap people in Open source and will dominate other offerings because it has a big name behind it, so damages atom/emacs/etc Open source and pretty much an inferior copy of an existing thing (Atom) Developers who are proud of using VSCode baffle me, have a word with yourselves.
- oblio 8y ago
  Design choices are not always bad. And Open Source != not being opinionated. Regarding the spyware thing, agreed, but at the end of the day, the makers choose how they distribute the thing. It's just like Chrome and many other products. I, for one, am thankful that they're making available a high quality tool for free.
  - ken 8y ago
    > It's just like Chrome and many other products. Exactly. That's another program whose "open source" status frustrates and saddens me.
    - oblio 8y ago
      I guess you should be looking for Free Software. After all, there was a big kerfuffle about it in the early 2000's.
- mrighele 8y ago
  Not an user of VSCode, but what you wrote applies to a lot of corporate-backed open source products. Try to replace VSCode with Chrome in your post, it will probably even more apt.
vvillena 8y ago
Lots of editors out there are nicer and friendlier than Emacs. Most of them eventually fall out of fashion. I was using Emacs when Textmate was the hot new thing. The Sublime came around. Then came the first Electron-powered editors like Atom and Brackets. Then came VSCode. While people kept chasing these new editors, I've been using Emacs for more than 10 years. I'll be still using Emacs when the hotter, newer thing eventually comes around.
- jammygit 8y ago
  Imho, Sublime is pretty slick after a few custom shortcuts and tweaks. I really do love that little editor.
black-tea 8y ago
Maybe, but it's replacing notepad++, textmate, sublime and other previously fashionable editors, not emacs. It's not even in the same league.

chimprich 8y ago

VSCode is the first editor I've seen that has made me think maybe I'll move away from Emacs at some point. I think a fully tooled-up Emacs setup in the hands of an experienced user is still faster and more powerful but I do wonder if Emacs will be able to develop fast enough to keep up with the cutting edge.

thecryusofiran 8y ago
As an Emacs user I'm mostly "afraid" of VSCode getting so popular that people will make cool tools targeting VSCode only. Like, it'll become the Chrome of text editors.
- simias 8y ago
  Emacs hasn't been really mainstream in quite a while and it's still actively maintained and improved upon. I'm not too worried. A small-ish skilled community is enough to keep the project going. What's VSCode's market share anyway? Is it really that big? I've never used it personally and I had no idea it was so popular.
  - kryptiskt 8y ago
    It has become really popular: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#technology-most-popular-development-environments https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#technology-m...
  - pulisse 8y ago
    > A small-ish skilled community is enough to keep the project going. The trends of the last few years are worrisome, though, particularly as regards the pool of developers who can work on Emacs core (the part written in C). Right now there's only one dev who's in a position to do non-trivial work on the display engine, and he also took on primary maintainer responsibilities a couple of years ago. When he burns out, the project is going to stall, hard. Stefan Monnier, who was maintainer for most of the past decade, perceived this trend very clearly and was vocal in trying to recruit new talent. He didn't get much cooperation from other core devs.
    - drieddust 8y ago
      It feels like Emacs Developers are actively tries to shoo away modernization and people who do not want to put in hours trying to actively learn just Emacs. At one point I tried using Emacs for everything but it didn't work out for me. Now I still use it but only for tasks management and coding. Unless you want to spend hours of your time customizing it and then a lot of other person also does the same customization. This just ends up wasting a lot of time overall. For me Emacs lacks the following and I think others will have the same feeling: Obscure Terminology Documentation is all geeky with terms like frames, META, kill ring etc. This creates unnecessary friction for a new user. Basics of ELISP can be learned rather quickly but trying to apply it while grokking the tersely written documentation is just discouraging. Sensible Defaults Simple things CTRL-C, CTRL-V does not work out of the box. Mobile Interface It is an error not to provide a facility to interface with mobile devices natively. I get full Emacs can be invoked via termux on any Android device. However, it is just unusable and irritating. Orgazly and likes also not very useful.
      - simias 8y ago
        Well the problem is that people caring about Emacs have learned a long time ago what a kill-ring, the point, the cursor and meta mean in the context of Emacs. In its defence, a lot of that predates modern user interface conventions. Changing this lingo would probably make it more approachable for newcomers but it would confuse experienced users. On top of that you can be sure that not all elisp out there will be updated quickly (if ever) and you end up with two different words for the same things in different docs which is not exactly a win for anybody. Beyond that Emacs's docs are unparalleled in the editor world as far as I know, you can explore pretty much any functionality by calling "describe-key", "describe-mode" etc... Even decades later very few (if any) editor can rival the flexibility and self-documenting nature of Emacs. Regarding key bindings I agree that it's definitely a pain point for newcommers, it's just too different from the modern standard (while not necessarily being better. C-_ for undo? I got used to it but it's hard to defend). Unfortunately making a complete new set of bindings that would play nice with 3rd party packages is probably very difficult.
  - axelrosen 8y ago
    It's just my impression, but for the new generation of developers "born" into a js-first world it's pretty much the primary choice. And again I don't have numbers but it does seem like the new generation is MUUCH larger and much more active on mainstream social media. Hacker news must seem like what slashdot seems to me. I can see a situation where 0 users switch to VSCode and in a few years it still has, say, 80% of market share, just by getting all the new ones.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      > And again I don't have numbers but it does seem like the new generation is MUUCH larger and much more active on mainstream social media. Hacker news must seem like what slashdot seems to me. Part of it can be attributed to growth. If the population of programmers grows by 100% every 5 years (an estimate I remember reading somewhere), then at any given time, half of the workforce has at most 5 years of experience. This explains why our industry seems to be so full of "js-first" developers - because in fact, it is.
- SmirkingRevenge 8y ago
  Editor trends seem to fairly volatile. Textmate was the new shiny favorite until it wasn't. Sublime was the new shiny favorite till it wasn't. Atom was the new shiny favorite... etc.
  - PurpleRamen 8y ago
    Those had all legit flaws which prevents wider usage, like being limited to one platform, being commercial or slow or dead... They all lakc in concept, because they are editors first, and not much of an IDE. VS Code is the first who actually avoids all the flaws. It's flexible, yet still quite fast, relative tame on RAM, yet full of IDE-features, running on all platforms and cost you just some privacy if you don't know about the data-collecting. Additionally, it sparked the LSP a movement which is benefitial for all editors/IDEs, and we will see how much more will come from this. So even if VS Code itself will lost traction, it's heritage might prevail. But overall the specs so far look very healthy for a project in that realm, and chances are good that it will stay for a while.
rataata_jr 8y ago
With support for language server protocol we can have the best of both worlds.
purple_ducks 8y ago
Well hopefully with the advent & oncoming onslaught of Language Server Protocol, most IDEs can spend their time on UI/UX polish. ...Obligatory mention of Xi editor: https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor ...

threatofrain 8y ago

I would say that IntelliSense is the differentiating magic of VS Code. Otherwise it's just an awesome editor.

kgwxd 8y ago

RIP battery though.

cjohansson 8y ago
Yeah Visual Studio Code drains battery, CPU and memory. Emacs is extremely resource-efficient, it's probably around thousand times more optimized than Visual Studio Code
- baldfat 8y ago
  > it's probably around thousand times more optimized than Visual Studio Code I am not saying that VS Code is everyone's answer and choice but VS Code is resource friendly enough. Who cares about the resource difference between EMACS and VS Code in real world practicality? I know people love to bash anything electron but it really isn't anything to worry about when programing with anything that is 6 years old or newer. VS Code is immediate and responsive on my Dell at work (10 years old) (I refuse to give it up even though I have several more computers but everyone needs a spare computer) what do we need besides that in terms of resource-efficient now a days? I know that it use to be a big deal and I propose that its a non-factor these days.
  - hellofunk 8y ago
    I can use Emacs and write C++ and compile often and go 15 hours on a single Mac Book pro battery charge. That’s why some people use Emacs.
  - nothrabannosir 8y ago
    > Who cares about the resource difference between EMACS and VS Code in real world practicality? I literally use different apps on battery vs wall power: wall: Firefox, Slack, VSCode battery: Safari, mail, Emacs The difference is clear as night & day. Mac OS X has a tab in Activity Monitor where you can observe energy impact of different apps, and it consistently reports Electron apps as... psychotic. An order of magnitude (10x) more intensive than their native counterparts.

zimablue 8y ago

VSCode has very much opposing philosophy to Emacs. It's a Microsoft product and it shows, they don't have standard concept of buffers/windows, so trying to do customization is ugly. For example, you can't easily implement a shell which moves around the windows and can also sit on a side, because windows and sidebars are totally different concepts in the code. VSCode depresses the hell out of me, it's almost a summary of the bad things of open source. Open source but most people will download it with spyware Open source but not really built as a nice platform to be meaningfully extended Open source and controlled by a single company Open source and used cynically as a wedge to pull developers into your orbit Open source and not at all written from an extensible mindset, just enough extensibility to trap people in Open source and will dominate other offerings because it has a big name behind it, so damages atom/emacs/etc Open source and pretty much an inferior copy of an existing thing (Atom) Developers who are proud of using VSCode baffle me, have a word with yourselves.

oblio 8y ago
Design choices are not always bad. And Open Source != not being opinionated. Regarding the spyware thing, agreed, but at the end of the day, the makers choose how they distribute the thing. It's just like Chrome and many other products. I, for one, am thankful that they're making available a high quality tool for free.
- ken 8y ago
  > It's just like Chrome and many other products. Exactly. That's another program whose "open source" status frustrates and saddens me.
  - oblio 8y ago
    I guess you should be looking for Free Software. After all, there was a big kerfuffle about it in the early 2000's.
mrighele 8y ago
Not an user of VSCode, but what you wrote applies to a lot of corporate-backed open source products. Try to replace VSCode with Chrome in your post, it will probably even more apt.

vvillena 8y ago

Lots of editors out there are nicer and friendlier than Emacs. Most of them eventually fall out of fashion. I was using Emacs when Textmate was the hot new thing. The Sublime came around. Then came the first Electron-powered editors like Atom and Brackets. Then came VSCode. While people kept chasing these new editors, I've been using Emacs for more than 10 years. I'll be still using Emacs when the hotter, newer thing eventually comes around.

jammygit 8y ago
Imho, Sublime is pretty slick after a few custom shortcuts and tweaks. I really do love that little editor.

black-tea 8y ago

Maybe, but it's replacing notepad++, textmate, sublime and other previously fashionable editors, not emacs. It's not even in the same league.