4 ms·

Very true but I think what's also implied in the article is that new tools (VS Code) that look very different from old tools (vi/emacs) will probably not last.

Very true but I think what's also implied in the article is that new tools (VS Code) that look very different from old tools (vi/emacs) will probably not last. So, if A is very old and B is very different from A then B is less likely to succeed. I don't believe that, btw, just guessing at the mindset of the author.

horsawlarway 4y ago
Even that's a fairly bad take. Visual Studio Code is based on a much older line (visual studio) which dates back to 1997. It's not nearly so new as it may seem, although I certainly appreciate the refresh from the older, more feature-filled (and feature slowed) visual studio proper. Not to mention - most of the "new stuff" in visual studio code is really just a nice UI layer that's built using mature and incredibly battle tested tooling - HTML/CSS/JS.
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  Is VS Code actually based on Visual Studio? I thought it was purely a marketing-based connection like Java/Javascript.
  - horsawlarway 4y ago
    Depends on how you define "based on", I suppose. It comes from the same parent company, with a lot of interest in solving many of the same challenges. The UI paradigms are obviously related, and if you've ever done any real VS project debugging, you'll find the structure of those configuration files very (very) similar to how tasks work in VSCode. I don't believe the VSCode codebase ever actually pulled anything from the original visual studio, but the roots of the application clearly come from the same place.
    - pvg 4y ago
      It's not meaningfully based on VS proper beside the name. The main difference is it lives in a very different ecological niche. Microsoft wouldn't have taken up its development if it didn't.
      - 323 4y ago
        If disruption does happen, it's better to be the one disrupting your own product than let others do it. Some people, a few for now, are migrating from VS proper to VS Code, including for languages like C++/C#. I am one of them.
        withinboredom 4y ago
        I can’t really use VS code for work (PHP support is nonexistent compared to PHPStorm), but I needed to make some changes to a C++ codebase in WSL. VS couldn’t get anything to work, I couldn’t even get it to compile. VS code got compiling and step debugging via gdb working after just a few tweaks to the make file and tasks. Worked like a charm.
- zwieback 4y ago
  Upvoted but disagree. VS Code and VS have totally different lineages and probably not much shared code under the hood. I've used VS for many years (best IDE bar none, in my opinion) and when I started playing with VS Code I couldn't help but think they should have chosen a different name. I appreciate what VSCode is achieving, though, I can run on my Linux host and remote into my microcontroller bare-bones OS for debugging and everything works nicely together but it ain't no Visual Studio.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    VS Code is more of an editor (with a nice plugin system) than an IDE, right? Should have called it something like "Technical Notepad."
  - jen20 4y ago
    The reason the binary is called "code" is because the name "Visual Studio" was applied at the last minute by marketing - this was told directly to me by one of the program managers involved in the launch.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    Yeah I'd say the lineage is Notepad++ -> Sublime -> Atom -> VS Code

horsawlarway 4y ago

Even that's a fairly bad take. Visual Studio Code is based on a much older line (visual studio) which dates back to 1997. It's not nearly so new as it may seem, although I certainly appreciate the refresh from the older, more feature-filled (and feature slowed) visual studio proper. Not to mention - most of the "new stuff" in visual studio code is really just a nice UI layer that's built using mature and incredibly battle tested tooling - HTML/CSS/JS.

TheCoelacanth 4y ago
Is VS Code actually based on Visual Studio? I thought it was purely a marketing-based connection like Java/Javascript.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  Depends on how you define "based on", I suppose. It comes from the same parent company, with a lot of interest in solving many of the same challenges. The UI paradigms are obviously related, and if you've ever done any real VS project debugging, you'll find the structure of those configuration files very (very) similar to how tasks work in VSCode. I don't believe the VSCode codebase ever actually pulled anything from the original visual studio, but the roots of the application clearly come from the same place.
  - pvg 4y ago
    It's not meaningfully based on VS proper beside the name. The main difference is it lives in a very different ecological niche. Microsoft wouldn't have taken up its development if it didn't.
    - 323 4y ago
      If disruption does happen, it's better to be the one disrupting your own product than let others do it. Some people, a few for now, are migrating from VS proper to VS Code, including for languages like C++/C#. I am one of them.
      - withinboredom 4y ago
        I can’t really use VS code for work (PHP support is nonexistent compared to PHPStorm), but I needed to make some changes to a C++ codebase in WSL. VS couldn’t get anything to work, I couldn’t even get it to compile. VS code got compiling and step debugging via gdb working after just a few tweaks to the make file and tasks. Worked like a charm.
zwieback 4y ago
Upvoted but disagree. VS Code and VS have totally different lineages and probably not much shared code under the hood. I've used VS for many years (best IDE bar none, in my opinion) and when I started playing with VS Code I couldn't help but think they should have chosen a different name. I appreciate what VSCode is achieving, though, I can run on my Linux host and remote into my microcontroller bare-bones OS for debugging and everything works nicely together but it ain't no Visual Studio.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  VS Code is more of an editor (with a nice plugin system) than an IDE, right? Should have called it something like "Technical Notepad."
- jen20 4y ago
  The reason the binary is called "code" is because the name "Visual Studio" was applied at the last minute by marketing - this was told directly to me by one of the program managers involved in the launch.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Yeah I'd say the lineage is Notepad++ -> Sublime -> Atom -> VS Code