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Am I alone in not jumping on the Visual Studio [Code] bandwagon? Other online editors have had "vim modes" for ages (e.g. Overleaf) and frankly I'm unlikely to
by azalemeth 5y ago
Am I alone in not jumping on the Visual Studio [Code] bandwagon? Other online editors have had "vim modes" for ages (e.g. Overleaf) and frankly I'm unlikely to write a chonking great script or project in a browser on Github -- a minor modification is much more likely. VS Code's codebase is huge. Will Github allow people to use other $EDITORs?
(Yes, I'm aware this makes me sound like an old man!)
- sdze 5y agoAnd I still use Netbeans. It really is also not worse than the electron monstrosity VS Code (memory/cpu wise).
- pjmlp 5y agoMe too, the irony that those that used to bash Swing/Java rather use web sites packaged alongside the browser. At least this way it makes sense, as a pure Web application.
- Darmody 5y agoNetBeans is the best free and open source IDE, at least for PHP. It lacks some nice features and improvements that PHPStorm has, but it's pretty good overall. There are a couple things that NetBeans does better than PHPStorm, though.
- gtirloni 5y agoAre the other $EDITORS able to run inside a web browser?
- chrisco255 5y agoGotta be web-based and only other major one I know of is Atom, which was originally started by GitHub and is also owned by Microsoft now. Don't know if people are still using it much though.
- joshuaissac 5y agoThere was also Adobe Brackets, but it was discontinued earlier this month.
- luke2m 5y agoPhoenix (https://github.com/aicore/phoenix https://github.com/aicore/phoenix) is working on brackets in the browser.
- gedy 5y agoMan, I loved Brackets (Phoenix is a fork) when it came out. Much nicer than Atom, but then VSCode got much better and took over most of the mindshare.
- headmelted 5y agoYes, you're alone you luddite (kidding!). Each to their own really, and honestly not every tool is going to be a good fit for every project. I have day work on Visual Studio that I wouldn't dream of moving to VSC for a bunch of reasons. The reasons myself and others like VSC also have a lot to do with the plug-in ecosystem. More people using it means someone has likely already encountered my use case which means it's more likely a plugin exists to do what I need. There are places that live on JetBrains for this reason (sprawling homogenous codebases that cross domains and languages). Having support to hand not only for the code you use most, but every language/framework other folks in your organisation use, is a really useful feature for integration/debugging work.
- beardyw 5y agoThe range of support is great. I can program and run web front end, node, plain C or C++ for desktop, same for programming various chips, and ESP (using platformio), all from one familiar editor. I would now feel uncomfortable using anything else.
- lvncelot 5y agoAn in-browser (neo)vim instance with a dotfiles repo integration would really be something.
- dmurray 5y agoFirenvim exists for in-browser neovim. I haven't used it. [0]https://github.com/glacambre/firenvim https://github.com/glacambre/firenvim
- lvncelot 5y agoI'm currently using firenvim (It's great!), but you need a local neovim instance for it to work. I was thinking of something that would allow you to use any machine with a browser.
- raxxorrax 5y agoVSCode is/was a neat editor, but I fear it is slowly morphing to become an overloaded mess. It was so sleek and lightweight at first it was really a pleasure to use. But performance and bugs seem to increase, even if you don't use many or any plugins at all.
- tehbeard 5y agoI'm curious to know what sort of dev work you do with vscode, it still feels rather snappy to me with ~40 extensions, but perhaps using it for other languages is more of a problem?
- krono 5y ago> ~40 extensions Devs with this many extensions are an OpSec/data governance nightmare! VSCode desperately needs some sort of access policy/permission system for their extensions, and make it more obvious when an extension phones home code or other data its user doesn't directly provide it with. Copilot, for example, straight up sends and uses your code - not just the modifications you've made to the laundered code it provides you with, but any or all of it [1]. 1 https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/telemetry-terms https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/telemetry-terms
- raxxorrax 5y agoI am an embedded dev that mostly writes C/ASM, but also JS/HTML for visualization, where I use VSCode mostly. It still has decent performance and I will continue using it. I think I have my linters correctly configured so there isn't any huge background scanning of files. But I have the impression the early versions were faster.
- moogly 5y agoNo, even though I like this feature and use it, I normally don't use VSCode other than as a text editor for random stuff. My main drivers are IntelliJ products (WebStorm, Rider, CLion, DataGrip...). VSCode is just too sluggish for me.
- pjmlp 5y agoNope, I am just dragged into it for workflows where there are no options, I rather stay on IDEs and native editors otherwise. Still have some hope that eventually it gets redone in React Native or something.
- bennyp101 5y agoDepends what I’m doing, but most day stuff is in a JetBrains product, or vscode , or sublimetext - in that order. But I did go from notepad, to eclipse, to ST, to vscode to JetBrains, so … obviously I’m trying to get into emacs now
- tdhz77 5y agoCompanies want developers to buy into editors like religion. All of them (editors) do the same, but spending money on IntelliJ is the hardest flex because it says I’m an enterprise developer look at me.
- tclancy 5y agoReally? I swapped to PyCharm when I was a solo dev because it had superior code insight compared to the other editors. What is enterprise about it beyond it costing money?
- bennyp101 5y agoYea that’s a weird flex, I get some companies have “use these tools” but that’s largely for support and discounts
- tclancy 5y agoWait, wha? I worked for myself and it was busy time. I'd spent almost as much on other IDEs as PyCharm. Not a flex. When I flex, the Hulkamaniacs go wild and everyone takes their vitamins and says their prayers. WTF is a flex about buying software?
- bennyp101 5y agoSorry, I meant the comment about companies wanting to buy into enterprise stuff was weird - I wasn’t clear
- bennyp101 5y ago
- kumarvvr 5y agoI am a developer for almost 15 years now. My primary operating system is windows. I have used Linux but only sparingly. I have used many IDEs. I have never ever felt the need to use vim. Is it fair to say, because VSCode does not have a "vim mode", it is somehow inferior as an editor? I seriously don't get it. I have used VSCode almost from day one. It is a fantastic editor and quite a capable tool. I seriously love it.
- jagged-chisel 5y agoVSCode does little out of the box. You install plugins to get what you want. Including vim mode.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoI have never used vim in my life (20 years in dev. including on linux and used linux since the late 90s). Many people talk about vim lately, probably the most I've seen and I'm still not sure why. That said, VSCode is very good. But I don't believe in a web-based IDE and in remote Github repos. That's a recipe for disaster and unescapable vendor lock-in, and in any case it's only an option for web dev., really. Edit: Since some people always take things literally: I have of course tried vim, like most people who ever worked with Unix/Linux I suppose, but never got beyond that. I am surprised that it seems to have become so "fashionable" lately. There are many alternatives to vi/vim and many IDEs. My experience is that vi has always suffered from its interface and has struggled to expand beyond "bearded Unix gurus"...
- 5y ago
- wayneftw 5y agoOld man here - not sure what VS Code has to do with age, but I would rather use it than anything else. Does it load fast and offer the features I want? Yes. Within reason, that's all I care about. I don't know what the perfect codebase size is for you (4mb? 16kloc?), but if that matters to you I hope you get to use that product.
- mbeex 5y ago> Am I alone in not jumping on the Visual Studio [Code] These are at least 3 different questions: 1) Why should I use VS Code in general? 2) Why should I use VS Code online? (the articles topic) 3) Why should I use VS? The answers might turn out completely different. Personally, I have for my main languages (C++ & Python) full IDE's (VS & Wing IDE). For quick Python scripts, VSCode is considered an option that I use rather often. In what VSCode shines is - as also other commenters mentioned - his plugin eco-sytem. This has true swiss-knife traits. So I'm using it for many secondary and ad-hoc technologies: - CMake files - Julia - GPS files - JS files - LaTeX - JSON - XML - CSS - Markdown (vanilla, asciidoc, ReST) - remote editing
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y agoVS is unrelated to VS Code. VS is a full IDE for C++ and C# and the other .NET languages (and some other things like C to a lesser extent). VS Code is a decent text editor with a good plugin ecosystem. It's faster to start (if it doesn't have too many slow plugins) than most IDEs and easier to get used to than vi-based editors or EMACS. And unlike Sublime Text it's free. Unlike Notepad++ it's cross-platform. I personally use CLion for C (as well as Markdown, CMake, and shell scripts that are part of the same project as the C), PyCharm for Python, DataGrip for SQL, and VS Code for various text tasks like log file analysis and quick note taking. It's a handy editor, very useful for ad-hoc work but not really advantageous compared to a full IDE for most regular day-to-day work IMO.
- mbeex 5y agoYou should probably re-read the quote I was referring to.
- jchw 5y agoFor me the advantage of VSCode is in its approach and how it has differed from other products: - VSCode Remoting is really useful. It doesn’t suffer as much from latency as SSH or display forwarding, and lets you use some local configuration when remoting. Neovim will soon have a feature like this. - Language servers for code intelligence has greatly improved editor support for languages. Up until the introduction and adoption of LSP, which was practically an invention of VSCode, language support was significantly more hit-or-miss with most editors. Basically only IntelliJ IDEA could do similar code intelligence across many languages. Because of LSP though, more editors and more languages can participate in inline documentation, go to symbol, errors as you type, debugging, etc. for example, many people now use language servers with Vim, and you can see useful integrations for languages like Terraform/Hashicorp HCL. - The extensions ecosystem: it isn’t necessarily the greatest ever, but it is very solid. - Compared to many IDEs, it remains lightweight and fast to boot. Though I’m not complaining, (regular) Visual Studio and IntelliJ are too useful to ignore in some cases. - Unification: because it’s so versatile, across OSes, across runtimes, over remoting, over Code Spaces, you can buy into the ecosystem in your projects. You can tell Code Spaces what extensions to install and what commands to run, to try to build a nice environment. You can tell desktop VS Code what extensions are recommended, add workspace configuration to help improve the workflow. Users still can use other editors, and you can still include editor information for those editors too. But, for someone who just wants a good option to edit a specific project, pushing them towards VS Code is a really safe bet. To be clear it has some issues too: - There is no equally useable OSS version, as the Microsoft distribution has become more dependent on services and blobs. - It’s not as quick and responsive as something like Sublime Text or vim. … but honestly, I think it’s just great. If I was a new programmer again and I could jump right into projects and immediately begin working on them without having to figure out the rigmarole of version control, tool chains, build system and editor config, that would be amazing. For that reason I think Code Spaces and VSCode are net goods, though I think we ought not become too dependent on the specific solution. VSCode is never going to be the perfect editor for any specific use, but I believe overall it is usually a great editor.
- nerdponx 5y agoI get worried that VS Code is too popular, and that some higher ups might be tempted to go for an EEE play. The flipside is that MS pouring money into VS Code has tremendously benefited the entire code editor ecosystem, including (especially) FOSS editors that can reuse their language servers.
- itronitron 5y agoI tried VS Code for over a year and consider it severely lacking features that most IDEs had fifteen years ago. GitHub should reconsider whether they really want to be reminding everyone that MSFT owns them.
- tmccrary55 5y agoSame here. I've been told by various people how fast and efficient it is but it uses as much memory as a Windows VM and the code completion is screwed up 50% of the time for MS tech (and worse for others). It is usable just not very good, yet.
- jollybean 5y agoYes, they leave this out too often. And - I find the constant change in configurations very confusing, and the plugins also have scant documentation. I can tell 'what is installed' but not exactly how they work together. Having tied out JetBrains after years away - I'm now permanently back in the IDE camp. For whatever reason they are now 'faster' and so the extra bulk of features comes pretty much for free, and they are just well optimized for whatever you're trying to do. Java on VSCode is frankly full of little snags. C++ same. VSCode is a handy go-to tool for quickly looking at code from any language. For pilfering through some open-source Java, Dart, Rust, that little C project, Python ... the VS is it. But for mainline projects, a good IDE is it.
- symlinkk 5y agoWhat features?
- chasely 5y agoI've been using a highly-tuned emacs configuration as my IDE for a decade now. Each time I want try to switch to VS Code I find that all my weird little shortcuts are going to take a lot of time to re-learn in VS Code. I should really just take the time to switch to VS Code and rip off the bandaid since I think it would make life easier in the long run.
- poetaster 5y agoCan't believe I say this again. Emacs in evil mode.
- droobles 5y agoVS Code is nice! I need to give emacs another whirl, I learned Vim because I like working on a more lightweight cloud dev server while I travel.
- dleslie 5y agoVscode is to emacs what html5+css3 is to tex. Emacs will be around forever, but vscode will dominate.
- barrenko 5y agoVS Code is all fine an dandy but - 1) When you alt-tab you lose dialog tooltip, I can't handle this, it should be a number one priority to fix this 2) A lot of languages just look plain ugly in VS Code, not so in Emacs for example, Vim w/e
- rattray 5y ago> Will Github allow people to use other $EDITORs? Yes, just clone? Most people who want other editors probably don't want browser-based ones. I'm not sure if the VSCodeVim or VSCodeNeovim extensions work on the online version yet, but I'm sure some VSCode/GitHub engineers are on the case if not. EDIT: VSCodeVim (the main "Vim" extension) does "work" on github.dev but the escape key doesn't, so as soon as you press "i" you're stuck in insert mode forever. https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/7005 https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/7005
- philipswood 5y agoThis seems like it should not be very difficult to do for yourself if motivated. xterm.js [1] is pretty good. Something like gotty [2] and a engine for getting a container with a git checkout started should be relatively straight forward. [1]:https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/ https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/ [2]:https://github.com/yudai/gotty https://github.com/yudai/gotty
- reificator 5y agoI'm waiting for version 8 of xterm.js where they introduce a minimal version that uses less resources. Then we'll find out who's really behind the project... xterm-min-8.js
- Tyriar 5y agoAs the maintainer of xterm.js I have no idea what you're suggesting? FWIW we just shipped xterm-headless which is literally a minimal version that uses less resources.
- reificator 5y agoSorry bad joke about how the name "xterm" sounds like the beginning of the word "exterminate", implying it was made by Daleks from Doctor Who. I forgot HN is not the place for humor, and I did not intend to cast any actual aspersions toward anyone maintaining cool projects.
- Shorel 5y agoNo sir. I jumped on the SublimeText bandwagon long ago, and I don't see any reason to change to a slower editor.
- blacktriangle 5y agoNope you're not alone, the hype behind VSCode just seems wierd. It's not a bad editor by any means, but I can't figure out why its any different than the parade of TextMate, Sublime, Atom that came before.
- eyelidlessness 5y agoSeems like you could use a browser extension that intercepts the same key event to load the editor of your choice?
- brundolf 5y agoI'm fully bought-in to VSCode, though I can still appreciate the benefits of diversity Unfortunately I really doubt they'll ever offer alternate editors, especially given the technical challenges involved in embedding it in the browser, connecting it to whatever hosted environment it has, etc. The best you might hope for is that they'll provide a terminal to the workspace, from which I could see text-based editors being available (in fact... I wonder if you could do that from VSCode's built-in terminal)
- yepthatsreality 5y agoI’m with you. I see no real benefit to VS Code other than not understanding how your code editor works, if not a bit restrictive. SublimeText has filled the gaps above and I haven’t ever found a reason to leave it.
- bewuethr 5y agoThe web-based editor doesn't have a terminal, but the full-blown codespaces do have one, and they let you import your dotfiles (including running a bootstrapping script if necessary [1]). From there, you can run whatever terminal-based editor you want, or so the blog post about github.com development having moved to Codespaces tells me [2]. But for the lighter-weight web-based editor, it doesn't look like it. If you're a CLI person, you could browse using the GitHub CLI and clone repos from there to start editing; not as convenient as punching a single key to get from viewing in a browser to editing, though. [1]: https://docs.github.com/en/codespaces/customizing-your-codespace/personalizing-codespaces-for-your-account#dotfiles https://docs.github.com/en/codespaces/customizing-your-codes... [2]: https://github.blog/2021-08-11-githubs-engineering-team-moved-codespaces/#command-line https://github.blog/2021-08-11-githubs-engineering-team-move...
- jarek83 5y agoI'm on RubyMine with vim navigation. I find extremely helpful in everyday work and it's not only perceived feeling - I pair program sometimes with people that use VS Code and they tend to be much slower in finding things just because of the clunkiness of the VSC's UI.
- whateveracct 5y agoNah you aren't. I have tried it multiple times and it's just such a worse experience than emacs for me I won't waste my time. IDEA is the same way. Turns out coding isn't about text input after all.
- donmcronald 5y agoI used to use VSCode as a quick editor for small things, but the bloat seems to be accelerating. I really like Jetbrains editors (and pay for them). My biggest complaint about both is how they're so in your face about every little feature. I see you have this thing, should I enable feature X for you? It looks like you're editing a Docker file. Should I enable Docker integration. I guess I'm a pair programmer with Clippy now :-(
- ren_engineer 5y agoI'm more skeptical of MS/Github taking over the entire developer ecosystem. Have to admire their execution of this strategy so far