10 ms·

Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

264 points by ghuntley 4y ago

d0mine 4y ago
"The move affects millions of developers, as the Python extension is by far the most popular tool in the VS Code Marketplace" One of the reasons to use Emacs is to avoid asking Microsoft for permission to code.
- memco 4y ago
  Does eMacs have a good remote editing and debugging system comparable to VSC? I’ve tried pycharm and nvim, but both were clunky and did not work as well if at all for remote debugging and editing with navigation, autocomplete, linting etc. VSC does all that with very little manual configuration required.
  - elcritch 4y ago
    Emacs has "tramp". It can work pretty well. I'm not sure how well modern language servers work with it.
    - db48x 4y ago
      Editors mostly talk to LSP servers via pipes (usually just stdin/stdout, since the editor starts the lsp server), so running them on the remote server via TRAMP is generally not a problem. In principle should just work automatically, though sometimes in practice it does not.
  - pxc 4y ago
    > Does eMacs have a good remote editing and debugging system comparable to VSC? Emacs has a remote editing system sort of similar to VSCode, but much older, less slick, and a bit quirkier. But imo it's quite good. It's called TRAMP mode: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode
    - hibbelig 4y ago
      I haven’t used the VSC remote thing. I believe it requires to install things on the remote computer, and if those are unavailable you’re out of luck. Tramp makes do with whatever is there.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  The more diversity of tools programmers use, the merrier. We can't all pile up on one Big Tech™ thing and then no one dares to innovate or build another tool. I use vim and sublime text. Similarly, I'd like to see more hardware besides every dev studio using Macbooks. Close to 100% marketshare of macbooks, if that happens, would be terrifying. Microsoft, Apple are awesome. Just that they're now the size of nation states.
- wudangmonk 4y ago
  I would only consider moving away from emacs for something faster and equally extensible. VSCode always felt slow to me and it seems like a really bad idea to even invest in extending it. I did like the whole idea of LSP and have liked the changes that it has brought to emacs in unifying autocomplete and syntax highlighting even though it doesn't always work and can be rather slow. Too bad that it was Embrace Extend Extinguish all along.
infinityplus1 4y ago
This is what happens when you build software on another company's platform. Why put your time making plugins for VS Code when rug can be pulled from under any time?
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  The same could be said about many other platforms: Apps for iPhones and android, chrome and Firefox extensions. Yet people still write them, and some get screwed when their app or extension is removed or doesn’t evolve to the next API change.
  - forgotmypw17 4y ago
    I have grown to appreciate HTML and the Web for this reason. If done carefully, one can write an application which is accessible to dozens of different client software and hardware options, and no one vendor can screw you over.
    - cowtools 4y ago
      Generally true, unless that vendor is google. Manifest v3 is still in recent memory.
      - forgotmypw17 4y ago
        Yeah, it sucks what's happening with browser extensions and configurability in general. Opera 3, released in 1997, allows the user to override author styles with their own. Same for IE6, released in 2001. But that's a different aspect of the platform -- the browser itself. At least for the time being, on the Web side, there are so many different other browsers, that Chrome cannot break step with all of them at once. And so if I write basic HTML and test it thoroughly, I can accommodate almost any user on any device, browser, and configuration. And this makes me very happy.
        chii 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
forgotmypw17 4y ago
I had to use VS Code it briefly for a class, and was kind of shocked by the telemetry stuff, and that it's just ignore-accepted by both the students and the instructors. But what turned me off more was this janky feeling around the whole application, something I don't remember experiencing in many other Microsoft tools, such as VB. It feels like it was designed from the code up rather than from the interface down, and everything I do feels like I'm accommodating the program rather than the other way around. Anyway, the author of this article was right, I still did have it installed in my dev environment, left behind from those classes. I decided to use this opportunity to `pacman --remove code`. The situation with bad application behaviors being "baked into the code" and propagating to all the "free" distributions is very sad, similar to what's happening with both Chrome and Firefox. For example, HSTS is now baked into the all the standard distributions and there's absolutely no way (that I've found) to turn it off. I understand the "security" reasons behind it for regular users, but as someone mindful and often completely unable to access a website only because their certificate has expired, I am quite miffed.
- input_sh 4y ago
  FYI you can get around HSTS errors on Chromium-based browsers by typing thisisunsafe. Source: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/d8fc089b62cd4f8d907acff6fb3f5ff58f168697 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/d8fc089b62c...
  - d_k_f 4y ago
    Additionally, you can remove stored HSTS states using Chrome's chrome://net-internals configuration page.
    - forgotmypw17 4y ago
      Not anymore: >The net-internals events viewer and related functionality has been removed. Please use chrome://net-export to save netlogs and the external netlog_viewer to view them.
noduerme 4y ago
This is rather scary and disheartening. I finally switched from 12+ years of Eclipse to vscode just last year. After a disproportionate amount of hand wringing and testing. I'd rather move houses twice before moving to a new IDE. But it's true that since running VSCode I feel less like I actually own my environment. I would never rent an IDE or do my work in the cloud, just on basic principle. I really like VS now that I've wrangled it, though, and I'm hoping to not have to bail and find a new platform in the next 10 years or so.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  The Codium build mentioned in OP is fully free. You don't have to use the proprietary version unless you're actually relying on the few extra custom features/addons it provides over the open source one.
cowtools 4y ago
As far as I understand, it's not a big deal as this is sort of the dumb end of the IDE- just the text editor part, not the compiler or debugger. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know why anyone would bother using a microsoft text editor on linux, but if you are using windows you're already getting screwed pretty hard with telemetry If a windows-using colleague asks me what text editor to use, I just tell them to use notepad++ or geany. The hard part is moving them away from MSVSC++ to some command-line compiler or debugger (like msys/mingw) so they can make reliable/extensible build scripts.
- noduerme 4y ago
  One reason I chose VS is because I'm a small dev shop, often working alone, and it's one of the only good IDEs around with plugins for syncing via sftp. In many cases that saves me having to use a separate client or configure cloud rollouts for minor code changes. Small devs are the target audience for vscode and also the most likely to be negatively impacted if the environment fractures.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    See, what I would do in my case is I would just make a bash script for sftp. I'm not even sure if small devs benefit from such a bloated editor: the time you have to invest in writing a script or learning a command-line tool is to some extent time invested in learning a fungible skill, whereas time you invest in learning a graphical tool is usually not as extensible or reliable. A major time-sink in a previous job site was just setting up the environment for new developers, renewing licenses, configuring plugins, dealing with unexpected errors due to the environment, etc.
    - noduerme 4y ago
      The upshot of such a graphical IDE for me is basically lots of panes and windows to rapidly search in. I might have one library I've branched 7 times for 12 projects and need to have a few open and jump quickly to which version some line of code is referencing. It also helps with keeping version control and history right next to the working files. A bash script would be fine for syncing but it's not going to give me a diff on each file before I upload to a production environment. Playing it that close requires tooling in some red and green to make sure you don't hit the wrong button.
fwip 4y ago
I wish I'd realized that the author was an NFT shill before I got to the end of the article.
- forkfork 4y ago
  The author is one of the most influential NFT critics: e.g. https://amp.smh.com.au/business/companies/extortion-why-web3-is-pissing-off-a-lot-of-software-developers-20220516-p5alqd.html https://amp.smh.com.au/business/companies/extortion-why-web3...
  - ghuntley 4y ago
    Thanks forkfork. I'm _absolutely_ not an NFT shill and my avatar is funny af because NFT/Web3 is meant to be decentralised but it's built on central platforms. The avatar/pfp that I use received a DCMA takedown thus is an doubley illegal NFT [this will make sense if folks are aware of the RRBAYC lawsuit] that I can't change. It exists in "my wallet" but it can't be used anywhere. ps. The first ever Crypto Policy Symposium (with other critics like myself) is in 5 days - https://crypto-policy.tech/ https://crypto-policy.tech/
    - swyx 4y ago
      ok that could be a bit clearer because i absolutely judged you for having a BAYC hexagon profile.. nuance is lost on first impression
    - fwip 4y ago
      I'm not sure it's "funny af," but I'm glad to hear that you're opposed to them.
      - ghuntley 4y ago
        NFT's (and crypto) are unregistered securities. How they are being peddled into the masses is dodgy af and is definitely not funny af. What's going down with RRBAYC (using NFT's to destroy NFTs) is funny af: - https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/29/bored-ape-nft-sues-ryder-ripps/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/29/bored-ape... - https://gordongoner.com/ https://gordongoner.com/
georgia_peach 4y ago
Here's $0.00. Take it, and buy yourself a real editor. Anything you choose to pay above that goes to needy children in Uganda. corrected per systemvoltage: https://www.vim.org/sources.php https://www.vim.org/sources.php
- TobyTheDog123 4y ago
  Shift + Shift + Command + ESC + Shift + 1 + ~ + Shift + Esc + CTRL + Command + Shift + F1 + \x00 + F3 + ~ Phew! Finally back to my terminal
  - georgia_peach 4y ago
    M-x, C-x, M-Shift-x is emacs, not vim. It's :q<Enter> in vim. and to suction: because vi pre-dated those paradigms
    - suction 4y ago
    - agiacalone 4y ago
      Or ZZ if you want to save and exit. Saves a whole second! Also, for those of you who think vim is old, it’s got nothin’ on Ed. https://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs249/Resources/ed_is_the_standard_text_editor.html https://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs249/Resources/ed_is_the_standard...
    - nirimda 4y ago
      Vi predating certain paradigms explains why it doesn't follow them. But it doesn't make it any easier for a random developer who grew up in the context of those paradigms. A new developer wondering whether they should adopt some modern vi is not being unreasonable for searching out something that does follow the prevailing customs. (But they are on a fools errand, because there are exactly zero good general purpose developer environments and the question I have is which of gvim, intellij or vscodium pisses me off least today.)
  - 4y ago
skybrian 4y ago
I remember when the FSF had dire warnings about using the Sun JDK. I ignored it and kept on using Java, and nothing bad happened. The JDK was eventually GPLed, and by then I decided I didn't like Java anymore and moved on to better languages anyway. I feel kind of the same about VS Code. Binary product? Telemetry? Centralized marketplace? Some plugins are closed source? Eh, whatever. That stuff doesn't get in my way and I suspect that nothing particularly bad will happen to developers. Someday a better IDE will become popular, perhaps built on some of the code and standards spun off by VS Code (like the language server protocol), perhaps not. This editor will do until that happens. The politics isn't as good as I'd like, but often the politics never actually materializes as a bad user experience, despite the complaints.
- slimsag 4y ago
  I wonder did the drive behind people creating open source JDKs have nothing to do with Sun open sourcing theirs? I wonder in an alternative world where Sun locked down Java as hard as possible and sued anyone and everyone, would they not have been bought by Oracle? Are we sure that an editor will be able to displace VS Code in the future, if it's given away for free and so feature-packed? Browsers are another example of this. Or would the VS Code successor look like an Apple/Google/Amazon fork of VS Code?
  - brundolf 4y ago
    But ultimately these applications are still winning based on merit. If somebody created a new editor or browser that was substantially better, nothing's really stopping everyone from moving to it. Now- we can talk about how it's a problem that nobody can afford to build something good enough to compete with what these megacorps can afford to develop and give away for free. But that's a different, older, much bigger discussion.
    - slimsag 4y ago
      You and GP's point is that these applications win on the merits of their user experience. That's not wrong, in fact I'd say that's absolutely true. But it's important to call out that the user experience most people care about has almost nothing to do with whether or not software is open/hackable. Because of that, I would suggest it is realistic that a decade or two from now we could largely lose that feature, and find we have 100% proprietary cloud-based IDEs.
mkl95 4y ago
I understand Visual Studio Code as a sophisticated Language Server Protocol frontend, and it generally does a good job at that. The IDE of the future will have Jetbrains grade UX with a heavy emphasis on LSP interfaces that "just work", rather than requiring some investigation about what setting needs to be set to which value and why basic stuff breaks mysteriously.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Interestingly, JetBrains offer Community Edition IDEs with the same extension interface as the paid versions. You could (and likely already can) support LSP integration through that. (What JetBrains sell is the depth of knowledge of a language and its ecosystem, advanced and specific code manipulation tools, and general polish and attention to detail. This is not impossible but pretty hard to reproduce in an open-source product, sadly.)
  - mkl95 4y ago
    JetBrains Fleet (https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/ https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/) may already be doing something like this > Fleet provides a polyglot experience, offering smart support for many languages and technologies out of the box, with support for even more planned via dedicated plugins. With the help of LSPs you will also be able to use other language services in Fleet. > Fleet is designed to automatically detect your project configuration from the source code, maximizing the value you get from its smart code-processing engine while minimizing the need to configure the project in the IDE.
onion2k 4y ago
...Microsoft in true Microsoft form of moving ever so slowly and doing it over a generation of people as not to spook them has been transitioning their customer base into consumers of services offered by Microsoft. A company like Microsoft is changing the software industry by moving developers to a SaaS model, and articles like this suggest this is a terrible thing because we're losing control over what we do, they're is mining all our data, and locking us in to their platform. There's an amusing irony that articles like this get posted to HN. This is the exact strategy that we would celebrate any HN startup for cleverly 'disrupting' any other industry - when someone launches a startup to make farming or shipping more efficient through killing off old paper based work flows, improving SaaS tools, giving customers insights through ML over millions of pieces of data, and also quietly sells those insights to boost revenue and locking customers in by making it hard to export their data, HN loves that. Do it in the software industry though and the comments are a lot less positive.
- eberkund 4y ago
  I guess because software developer types loving being the ones doing that to others but hate when they are the ones it is done to?
  - llbeansandrice 4y ago
    Anti-competitive for me but not for thee
- xahrepap 4y ago
  To be fair, I think it's a lot different to see a startup disrupt a market, than to see one of the biggest companies of all time do it. Anti-competitive behaviors from a behemoth are scary. From a startup? I mean... what can they do? Usually nothing. So it's kind of fun seeing the underdog make some noise!
- xwolfi 4y ago
  You comingle HN and Ycombinator maybe? I dislike VCs and startup culture while I work in a 150yo bank ... I still like HN and shit on the model you described.
mikewarot 4y ago
.NET is 20 years old now, according to Wikipedia. I've never seen the point of it, and have avoided using it in anything I've cared about. If people are foolish enough to use it, I'm not going to be able to stop them. I've tried Visual Studio (to compile my forth project with), but it just doesn't work for me anyway. There's too big an impedance mismatch. I'll stick with NotePad++ for non-pascal stuff, and Lazarus for the rest.
- seabrookmx 4y ago
  What does .NET (and Visual Studio for that matter) have to do with Visual Studio Code? The latter is an IDE based on web technologies that shares naming with Visual Studio proper in the same way Java shares a name with JavaScript. > I've never seen the point of it Well if we're talking .NET, it's OSS now and runs on Mac/Linux/Docker. It's legitimately a great platform for writing backend services. C# is a java-like that has a lot of really nice benefits over java (in a similar vein to Kotlin). C# also pioneered the async/await syntax you see everywhere now, and as such has first class async and streaming support which is a real boon for workloads. > Notepad++ A man of culture I see!
swyx 4y ago
one of the most "game of thrones" moves ever is the Julia Liuson promotion for DevDiv. i'm just a rando outsider so I have no context at all (in particular i dont wanna discount Julia's achievements), but just from the outside Nat seemed to be set to run devdiv and potentially be future Microsoft CEO . I respect that that is a very different job than probably what Nat wanted anyway. Just seemed like the rare "tech exec who 1000% gets developers" that you'd hope takes over Microsoft after Satya.
- oaiey 4y ago
  With all respect, Nat is not a Satya. And Microsoft is a lot more than just DevDiv.
  - nindalf 4y ago
    We didn’t know Satya was a Satya before he took over and accomplished what he did.
keithnz 4y ago
Personally, I wouldn't actually care if Visual Studio Code was completely proprietary with zero open source element. I think the imagined consequences tend to mostly be not that significant for the vast majority of people, at most it would be a blip in the timeline as people switch to something else. The actual consequence (as implied by this article) seems to be people who build their business around these tools, they are entering a particular ecosystem backed by a large corporate and they are leveraging on the big corporates ability to make that ecosystem popular. That kind of is what it is. Pros and Cons.
- isodev 4y ago
  The consequences for the majority are such that, over time, leading language ecosystems become tied to Microsoft services. One example in the article is the availability of alternative editors and IDEs decreasing over time in favor of extensions to VSCode. Essentially, we are driving towards a monoculture - either you are using VSCode and adjacent services, or you choose an alternative, pay the price of compatibility, and experience paper cuts.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    > leading language ecosystems become tied to Microsoft services until a free alternative is developed. Making a freely-licensed language plugin is not inherently hard, it's just a lot of work. You're paying for convenience.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    On the other hand, we now have LSP.
    - oaiey 4y ago
      Their strategy is a mixed bag. They want to maintain that in an open source way but they work very hard that their experience is the best so they can capitalize on that. Not a new playbook.
    - oakpond 4y ago
brundolf 4y ago
This is a good summary of the playing field, but I think they're way overblowing the panic In summary Microsoft has: - Made an incredibly good web-based code editor which is 100% OSS, no strings attached - Made an extensions repository and a bunch of really high quality first-party extensions that have restricted licenses Sure, in a perfect world the whole thing would be fully OSS. But in the worst-case, where people some day decide they want to fork or whatever, we're still much better off than before VSCode. The editor project is a net gain, even if forking means building some of the other bits yourself. This is still a net increase in value for everyone- even if you exclude the restricted parts; not a decrease, much less an apocalypse.
- 015a 4y ago
  I'm not quite as sure. To me, its kind of like saying "well, we don't have to worry about global warming, oil is awesome and if it gets too bad we always have Mars". Which, I can explain a little bit because that analogy maybe only make sense in my head. I can't think of very many, if any, examples in computing history where a project, open source or not, followed the path of "dominating a domain" -> "sponsor does something crappy" -> "the community rallies around a fork" -> "the fork becomes a dominating force in its domain". I'm really sitting here trying to think of examples to help disprove this thesis, and would love to hear them. LibreOffice may be a good example. I can also see an argument for Oracle/proprietary SQL vs MySQL/Postgres. The NodeJS/iojs situation from years ago is, I think, a hallmark case-study in open source that more-so skips the "rally around the fork" step, but is nonetheless worth mentioning. There's probably dozens of examples in the "random esoteric npm library" domain, but those aren't hitting a thousandth the scale that the gigaprojects like VSCode do. There's a far more common path for projects, however. I'll pick on MongoDB as an example; they did something kind of crappy, with their GPL-wearing-a-trenchcoat-proprietary license which, in my experience, all but killed the database for some companies I've contracted with. These companies (users) took that opportunity to move to a truly open source solution, like MySQL. The move, in all cases, was long; arduous; cost a lot of development time; and they were happy in the end. Circling back to the metaphor; there's a hypothetical migration path for anything. Its near-laughably trivial to even list that as a triaging factor for "well, they could be evil, they could turn evil, burning oil could destroy our planet, but at least we have Mars." Computers are turing machines, anything can be rebuilt. That's not the point. If we opt in to an environment which is only deemed acceptable because of a Plan B, it behooves anyone with investment in that environment to think critically about the probability of being forced to implement Plan B, and the cost of that implementation. Circling back to the examples: one is behooved to analyze this through the lens that Plan B may not be the Plan B one thinks it is. If VSCode jumps the shark; will vscodium take its place? MongoDB jumped the shark, and no one was there to catch it; those people who were left wading in the water had to invest significant engineering time transitioning to something entirely different. VSCode is more than just Code; its the users, its the marketing, its the trademark, its the extension standards, its the governing body, maturity, maybe even patents, its all these things which vscodium does not have.
hatuthecat 4y ago
Microsoft can’t seem to kick the old Microsoft no matter how hard they try. They embraced, extended, and now are extinguishing with the python extension.
- oaiey 4y ago
  It is not EEE. But monopolistic and capitalistic behavior. It is impossible for companies to shake that off.
suction 4y ago
nindalf 4y ago
Good article. The author makes a compelling case about how Microsoft’s strategy isn’t on the up and up. I was never convinced that telemetry was inherently evil, but I do see the downsides of non-OSS language servers. I have only one request of the author and others - please stop citing TIOBE (https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/stop-citing-tiobe/ https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/stop-citing-tiobe/)
shbooms 4y ago
Holy hell, this blog is virtually unreadable. Article content aside, the fact that after pretty much every single paragraph there's 1-2 giant links to some other article and/or an ad is just infurianting and makes it impossible to focus. I stopped reading after the first few and will be adding this site to my blocklist.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- glitchcrab 4y ago
  I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this, I actually gave up reading it halfway through because the ads fracture the content far too much - it just doesn't flow.
- aembleton 4y ago
  I had to add this rule to UBo so I could continue reading ghuntley.com##.kg-bookmark-card
- pxc 4y ago
  I likewise found this annoying. The giant link previews are especially disruptive on mobile where two in a row can literally take up most of the screen, although they're also obnoxious on the desktop. When I first saw them I thought maybe they were ads, or there was a mistake and I ran into the end of the article early. I liked the post, though! Geoffrey, please reconsider this citation style where you have an ellipsis and then giant link previews. I think it distracts from good content. Could similar link previews upon hover still scratch the itch that drove you to try these link previews?
vikinghckr 4y ago
Meanwhile Google and Facebook internally use VS Code based IDEs as their official developer tooling. Pretty sure their legal teams have considered any legal risks with licensing.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  Google also uses/used Perforce. They're fine with using commercial & proprietary tools. That's not really the same conversation as here.
golf1052 4y ago
I don't really understand this post. I'm a supporter of open source and free software and I can also understand wanting to avoid vendor lock-in. However I don't understand how this is Microsoft's fault for building closed source tooling. I'm upset with Microsoft's hypocritical stance on .NET and C# being open source without all tooling being open source as well but when it comes to useful tooling like Codespaces, Pylance, or the Java debugger in VSCode I don't see why Microsoft should be blamed them being closed source. Microsoft came into the Java and Python space and made tooling that is being accepted by developers. The author does touch on why companies like Microsoft are able to succeed against open source software. It's because they have the money to pay their own developers to make good software. Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft but not under DevDiv or Azure.
- oaiey 4y ago
  It is an App Store monopoly problem. Take Google Android as a counterpart. Android Open Source Project = VS Code (MIT codebase( Android at Samsung and dozens other = VS Code with Microsoft EULA Enforced Play Store in vendor phones = VS Code Extension Market Place (not accessible to any other competition) Google offering dominant services = Microsoft Language Packages (both proprietary => user lock in) Google abusing it (eg by marketing, subscriptions, ...) = Microsoft abusing it So what is explained in that article is how you run a monopoly on an open source project. Julia and the DevDiv is doing that. That is understandable (she has to make money to get her bonus) but not good for the rest of us. Disclaimer: .NET fanboy
  - blackoil 4y ago
    A major material difference is that unlike phone world wherein a duopoly controls the market and supply chain is also similarly locked. We have a very functional ecosystem of competing products. I can choose to use IntelliJ, Eclipse, Vim, Emacs ... without completely disrupting my life. Tomorrow Intellij may decide to launch paid LSPs for Java/Go/... and MS is already using same components for VSCode and Visual Studio. Or author of GitLens can port his plugin to Intellij or Eclipse
philonoist 4y ago
Even developers are taken for a ride. Just like WhatsApp and Chrome, it all comes down to ripple effects of "If others didn't use it, I can't". I have given a number of examples of this stubborn sticky monopoly below. Every newbie while learning to code: scared of reviews on internet like "I couldn't get help with this editor online or with colleagues and I can't risk being stuck on this project so I switched to VS Code" Every newbie while interviewing: impress interviewers even by a little chance that they use the "industry standard" tool to code. Every experienced developer, even on this HN post, says "It doesn't have excellent support like VS CODE, in remote development, centralized marketplace, etc." I have pieced together and my conclusion comes from the observation below. There is a reason enterprise, rather than startup world use M$ products. The power and money to fight for fairness. Their C#/.NET compiler is open source and excellently designed but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like closed source] VSCODE is open source but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like telemetry and extensions where the real power lies, being closed source] Phone and App market but to with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ it is going to be based on android like Edge on Chromium] VStudio is best IDE but to with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like telemetry + closed source extensions + Heavy + slow + whatnot!] MAUI is Wowza! tool with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like repackage old Xamarin in new branding] OneNote is the best note taking app ever but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like lock in using obscure format and closed source] Every company they acquire but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ Embraaace Exteeend Extin...]
- oaiey 4y ago
  That is not EEE. But monopolistic behavior.
  - philonoist 4y ago
    Yeah, I mean it keeps on adding to the list of complaints and M$ won't budge.
- nindalf 4y ago
0x073 4y ago
Microsoft created VSCode and other company's want create a paid saas, but can't easily doing this without have own LSP extensions and marketplace? Seems legit to me.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
The article is alarmist at best. But it does point out one critical point: if you start using the whole ecosystem because of convenience, you may end up reliying on MS Codespace, and therefore lock yourself in. The solution seems simple to me: don't put your entire stack in codespace. Make sure you can easily use your whole stack on your own computer, and migrate easily.
ghusto 4y ago
I was reading [this](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27687450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27687450) yesterday, and somebody said something to the effect that we should trust Microsoft, because they've turned around on OpenSource. That we should judge them by their "years now" actions, instead of the past. I tried to formulate a response to this which explained why we couldn't trust them, and it was all a slow-burn ruse, but gave up. This article explains my feelings well though, especially this part: > Visual Studio Code is a ramp to move the developer tooling ecosystem towards an end-to-end consumable services model of software development tools, and GitHub Codespaces is a white label of an existing service called Visual Studio Online aka Microsoft Dev Box aka Microsoft Azure DevTest Labs That perfectly explains what I've been feeling is coming. Yes, they're playing "nice" now, but it's only so they're allowed through the door. The old model of "embrace, extend, extinguish" has run dry, so now it's "embrace, extend, subscribe".
- ta8645 4y ago
  embrace, extend, extort?
  - ghusto 4y ago
    Haha, I was desperately trying to come up with an 'e' word. That's good enough ;)
    - appleflaxen 4y ago
      maybe "embrace, extend, exploit" works, too.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  So far more subtle than the Docker Desktop Maneuver.

264 points by ghuntley 4y ago

"The move affects millions of developers, as the Python extension is by far the most popular tool in the VS Code Marketplace" One of the reasons to use Emacs is to avoid asking Microsoft for permission to code.

memco 4y ago
Does eMacs have a good remote editing and debugging system comparable to VSC? I’ve tried pycharm and nvim, but both were clunky and did not work as well if at all for remote debugging and editing with navigation, autocomplete, linting etc. VSC does all that with very little manual configuration required.
- elcritch 4y ago
  Emacs has "tramp". It can work pretty well. I'm not sure how well modern language servers work with it.
  - db48x 4y ago
    Editors mostly talk to LSP servers via pipes (usually just stdin/stdout, since the editor starts the lsp server), so running them on the remote server via TRAMP is generally not a problem. In principle should just work automatically, though sometimes in practice it does not.
- pxc 4y ago
  > Does eMacs have a good remote editing and debugging system comparable to VSC? Emacs has a remote editing system sort of similar to VSCode, but much older, less slick, and a bit quirkier. But imo it's quite good. It's called TRAMP mode: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode
  - hibbelig 4y ago
    I haven’t used the VSC remote thing. I believe it requires to install things on the remote computer, and if those are unavailable you’re out of luck. Tramp makes do with whatever is there.
systemvoltage 4y ago
The more diversity of tools programmers use, the merrier. We can't all pile up on one Big Tech™ thing and then no one dares to innovate or build another tool. I use vim and sublime text. Similarly, I'd like to see more hardware besides every dev studio using Macbooks. Close to 100% marketshare of macbooks, if that happens, would be terrifying. Microsoft, Apple are awesome. Just that they're now the size of nation states.
wudangmonk 4y ago
I would only consider moving away from emacs for something faster and equally extensible. VSCode always felt slow to me and it seems like a really bad idea to even invest in extending it. I did like the whole idea of LSP and have liked the changes that it has brought to emacs in unifying autocomplete and syntax highlighting even though it doesn't always work and can be rather slow. Too bad that it was Embrace Extend Extinguish all along.

infinityplus1 4y ago

This is what happens when you build software on another company's platform. Why put your time making plugins for VS Code when rug can be pulled from under any time?

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
The same could be said about many other platforms: Apps for iPhones and android, chrome and Firefox extensions. Yet people still write them, and some get screwed when their app or extension is removed or doesn’t evolve to the next API change.
- forgotmypw17 4y ago
  I have grown to appreciate HTML and the Web for this reason. If done carefully, one can write an application which is accessible to dozens of different client software and hardware options, and no one vendor can screw you over.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    Generally true, unless that vendor is google. Manifest v3 is still in recent memory.
    - forgotmypw17 4y ago
      Yeah, it sucks what's happening with browser extensions and configurability in general. Opera 3, released in 1997, allows the user to override author styles with their own. Same for IE6, released in 2001. But that's a different aspect of the platform -- the browser itself. At least for the time being, on the Web side, there are so many different other browsers, that Chrome cannot break step with all of them at once. And so if I write basic HTML and test it thoroughly, I can accommodate almost any user on any device, browser, and configuration. And this makes me very happy.
      - chii 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

forgotmypw17 4y ago

I had to use VS Code it briefly for a class, and was kind of shocked by the telemetry stuff, and that it's just ignore-accepted by both the students and the instructors. But what turned me off more was this janky feeling around the whole application, something I don't remember experiencing in many other Microsoft tools, such as VB. It feels like it was designed from the code up rather than from the interface down, and everything I do feels like I'm accommodating the program rather than the other way around. Anyway, the author of this article was right, I still did have it installed in my dev environment, left behind from those classes. I decided to use this opportunity to `pacman --remove code`. The situation with bad application behaviors being "baked into the code" and propagating to all the "free" distributions is very sad, similar to what's happening with both Chrome and Firefox. For example, HSTS is now baked into the all the standard distributions and there's absolutely no way (that I've found) to turn it off. I understand the "security" reasons behind it for regular users, but as someone mindful and often completely unable to access a website only because their certificate has expired, I am quite miffed.

input_sh 4y ago
FYI you can get around HSTS errors on Chromium-based browsers by typing thisisunsafe. Source: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/d8fc089b62cd4f8d907acff6fb3f5ff58f168697 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/d8fc089b62c...
- d_k_f 4y ago
  Additionally, you can remove stored HSTS states using Chrome's chrome://net-internals configuration page.
  - forgotmypw17 4y ago
    Not anymore: >The net-internals events viewer and related functionality has been removed. Please use chrome://net-export to save netlogs and the external netlog_viewer to view them.

noduerme 4y ago

This is rather scary and disheartening. I finally switched from 12+ years of Eclipse to vscode just last year. After a disproportionate amount of hand wringing and testing. I'd rather move houses twice before moving to a new IDE. But it's true that since running VSCode I feel less like I actually own my environment. I would never rent an IDE or do my work in the cloud, just on basic principle. I really like VS now that I've wrangled it, though, and I'm hoping to not have to bail and find a new platform in the next 10 years or so.

zozbot234 4y ago
The Codium build mentioned in OP is fully free. You don't have to use the proprietary version unless you're actually relying on the few extra custom features/addons it provides over the open source one.

cowtools 4y ago

As far as I understand, it's not a big deal as this is sort of the dumb end of the IDE- just the text editor part, not the compiler or debugger. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know why anyone would bother using a microsoft text editor on linux, but if you are using windows you're already getting screwed pretty hard with telemetry If a windows-using colleague asks me what text editor to use, I just tell them to use notepad++ or geany. The hard part is moving them away from MSVSC++ to some command-line compiler or debugger (like msys/mingw) so they can make reliable/extensible build scripts.

noduerme 4y ago
One reason I chose VS is because I'm a small dev shop, often working alone, and it's one of the only good IDEs around with plugins for syncing via sftp. In many cases that saves me having to use a separate client or configure cloud rollouts for minor code changes. Small devs are the target audience for vscode and also the most likely to be negatively impacted if the environment fractures.
- cowtools 4y ago
  See, what I would do in my case is I would just make a bash script for sftp. I'm not even sure if small devs benefit from such a bloated editor: the time you have to invest in writing a script or learning a command-line tool is to some extent time invested in learning a fungible skill, whereas time you invest in learning a graphical tool is usually not as extensible or reliable. A major time-sink in a previous job site was just setting up the environment for new developers, renewing licenses, configuring plugins, dealing with unexpected errors due to the environment, etc.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    The upshot of such a graphical IDE for me is basically lots of panes and windows to rapidly search in. I might have one library I've branched 7 times for 12 projects and need to have a few open and jump quickly to which version some line of code is referencing. It also helps with keeping version control and history right next to the working files. A bash script would be fine for syncing but it's not going to give me a diff on each file before I upload to a production environment. Playing it that close requires tooling in some red and green to make sure you don't hit the wrong button.

fwip 4y ago

I wish I'd realized that the author was an NFT shill before I got to the end of the article.

forkfork 4y ago
The author is one of the most influential NFT critics: e.g. https://amp.smh.com.au/business/companies/extortion-why-web3-is-pissing-off-a-lot-of-software-developers-20220516-p5alqd.html https://amp.smh.com.au/business/companies/extortion-why-web3...
- ghuntley 4y ago
  Thanks forkfork. I'm _absolutely_ not an NFT shill and my avatar is funny af because NFT/Web3 is meant to be decentralised but it's built on central platforms. The avatar/pfp that I use received a DCMA takedown thus is an doubley illegal NFT [this will make sense if folks are aware of the RRBAYC lawsuit] that I can't change. It exists in "my wallet" but it can't be used anywhere. ps. The first ever Crypto Policy Symposium (with other critics like myself) is in 5 days - https://crypto-policy.tech/ https://crypto-policy.tech/
  - swyx 4y ago
    ok that could be a bit clearer because i absolutely judged you for having a BAYC hexagon profile.. nuance is lost on first impression
  - fwip 4y ago
    I'm not sure it's "funny af," but I'm glad to hear that you're opposed to them.
    - ghuntley 4y ago
      NFT's (and crypto) are unregistered securities. How they are being peddled into the masses is dodgy af and is definitely not funny af. What's going down with RRBAYC (using NFT's to destroy NFTs) is funny af: - https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/29/bored-ape-nft-sues-ryder-ripps/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/29/bored-ape... - https://gordongoner.com/ https://gordongoner.com/

georgia_peach 4y ago

Here's $0.00. Take it, and buy yourself a real editor. Anything you choose to pay above that goes to needy children in Uganda. corrected per systemvoltage: https://www.vim.org/sources.php https://www.vim.org/sources.php

TobyTheDog123 4y ago
Shift + Shift + Command + ESC + Shift + 1 + ~ + Shift + Esc + CTRL + Command + Shift + F1 + \x00 + F3 + ~ Phew! Finally back to my terminal
- georgia_peach 4y ago
  M-x, C-x, M-Shift-x is emacs, not vim. It's :q<Enter> in vim. and to suction: because vi pre-dated those paradigms
  - suction 4y ago
  - agiacalone 4y ago
    Or ZZ if you want to save and exit. Saves a whole second! Also, for those of you who think vim is old, it’s got nothin’ on Ed. https://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs249/Resources/ed_is_the_standard_text_editor.html https://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs249/Resources/ed_is_the_standard...
  - nirimda 4y ago
    Vi predating certain paradigms explains why it doesn't follow them. But it doesn't make it any easier for a random developer who grew up in the context of those paradigms. A new developer wondering whether they should adopt some modern vi is not being unreasonable for searching out something that does follow the prevailing customs. (But they are on a fools errand, because there are exactly zero good general purpose developer environments and the question I have is which of gvim, intellij or vscodium pisses me off least today.)
- 4y ago

skybrian 4y ago

I remember when the FSF had dire warnings about using the Sun JDK. I ignored it and kept on using Java, and nothing bad happened. The JDK was eventually GPLed, and by then I decided I didn't like Java anymore and moved on to better languages anyway. I feel kind of the same about VS Code. Binary product? Telemetry? Centralized marketplace? Some plugins are closed source? Eh, whatever. That stuff doesn't get in my way and I suspect that nothing particularly bad will happen to developers. Someday a better IDE will become popular, perhaps built on some of the code and standards spun off by VS Code (like the language server protocol), perhaps not. This editor will do until that happens. The politics isn't as good as I'd like, but often the politics never actually materializes as a bad user experience, despite the complaints.

slimsag 4y ago
I wonder did the drive behind people creating open source JDKs have nothing to do with Sun open sourcing theirs? I wonder in an alternative world where Sun locked down Java as hard as possible and sued anyone and everyone, would they not have been bought by Oracle? Are we sure that an editor will be able to displace VS Code in the future, if it's given away for free and so feature-packed? Browsers are another example of this. Or would the VS Code successor look like an Apple/Google/Amazon fork of VS Code?
- brundolf 4y ago
  But ultimately these applications are still winning based on merit. If somebody created a new editor or browser that was substantially better, nothing's really stopping everyone from moving to it. Now- we can talk about how it's a problem that nobody can afford to build something good enough to compete with what these megacorps can afford to develop and give away for free. But that's a different, older, much bigger discussion.
  - slimsag 4y ago
    You and GP's point is that these applications win on the merits of their user experience. That's not wrong, in fact I'd say that's absolutely true. But it's important to call out that the user experience most people care about has almost nothing to do with whether or not software is open/hackable. Because of that, I would suggest it is realistic that a decade or two from now we could largely lose that feature, and find we have 100% proprietary cloud-based IDEs.

mkl95 4y ago

I understand Visual Studio Code as a sophisticated Language Server Protocol frontend, and it generally does a good job at that. The IDE of the future will have Jetbrains grade UX with a heavy emphasis on LSP interfaces that "just work", rather than requiring some investigation about what setting needs to be set to which value and why basic stuff breaks mysteriously.

nine_k 4y ago
Interestingly, JetBrains offer Community Edition IDEs with the same extension interface as the paid versions. You could (and likely already can) support LSP integration through that. (What JetBrains sell is the depth of knowledge of a language and its ecosystem, advanced and specific code manipulation tools, and general polish and attention to detail. This is not impossible but pretty hard to reproduce in an open-source product, sadly.)
- mkl95 4y ago
  JetBrains Fleet (https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/ https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/) may already be doing something like this > Fleet provides a polyglot experience, offering smart support for many languages and technologies out of the box, with support for even more planned via dedicated plugins. With the help of LSPs you will also be able to use other language services in Fleet. > Fleet is designed to automatically detect your project configuration from the source code, maximizing the value you get from its smart code-processing engine while minimizing the need to configure the project in the IDE.

onion2k 4y ago

...Microsoft in true Microsoft form of moving ever so slowly and doing it over a generation of people as not to spook them has been transitioning their customer base into consumers of services offered by Microsoft. A company like Microsoft is changing the software industry by moving developers to a SaaS model, and articles like this suggest this is a terrible thing because we're losing control over what we do, they're is mining all our data, and locking us in to their platform. There's an amusing irony that articles like this get posted to HN. This is the exact strategy that we would celebrate any HN startup for cleverly 'disrupting' any other industry - when someone launches a startup to make farming or shipping more efficient through killing off old paper based work flows, improving SaaS tools, giving customers insights through ML over millions of pieces of data, and also quietly sells those insights to boost revenue and locking customers in by making it hard to export their data, HN loves that. Do it in the software industry though and the comments are a lot less positive.

eberkund 4y ago
I guess because software developer types loving being the ones doing that to others but hate when they are the ones it is done to?
- llbeansandrice 4y ago
  Anti-competitive for me but not for thee
xahrepap 4y ago
To be fair, I think it's a lot different to see a startup disrupt a market, than to see one of the biggest companies of all time do it. Anti-competitive behaviors from a behemoth are scary. From a startup? I mean... what can they do? Usually nothing. So it's kind of fun seeing the underdog make some noise!
xwolfi 4y ago
You comingle HN and Ycombinator maybe? I dislike VCs and startup culture while I work in a 150yo bank ... I still like HN and shit on the model you described.

mikewarot 4y ago

.NET is 20 years old now, according to Wikipedia. I've never seen the point of it, and have avoided using it in anything I've cared about. If people are foolish enough to use it, I'm not going to be able to stop them. I've tried Visual Studio (to compile my forth project with), but it just doesn't work for me anyway. There's too big an impedance mismatch. I'll stick with NotePad++ for non-pascal stuff, and Lazarus for the rest.

seabrookmx 4y ago
What does .NET (and Visual Studio for that matter) have to do with Visual Studio Code? The latter is an IDE based on web technologies that shares naming with Visual Studio proper in the same way Java shares a name with JavaScript. > I've never seen the point of it Well if we're talking .NET, it's OSS now and runs on Mac/Linux/Docker. It's legitimately a great platform for writing backend services. C# is a java-like that has a lot of really nice benefits over java (in a similar vein to Kotlin). C# also pioneered the async/await syntax you see everywhere now, and as such has first class async and streaming support which is a real boon for workloads. > Notepad++ A man of culture I see!

swyx 4y ago

one of the most "game of thrones" moves ever is the Julia Liuson promotion for DevDiv. i'm just a rando outsider so I have no context at all (in particular i dont wanna discount Julia's achievements), but just from the outside Nat seemed to be set to run devdiv and potentially be future Microsoft CEO . I respect that that is a very different job than probably what Nat wanted anyway. Just seemed like the rare "tech exec who 1000% gets developers" that you'd hope takes over Microsoft after Satya.

oaiey 4y ago
With all respect, Nat is not a Satya. And Microsoft is a lot more than just DevDiv.
- nindalf 4y ago
  We didn’t know Satya was a Satya before he took over and accomplished what he did.

keithnz 4y ago

Personally, I wouldn't actually care if Visual Studio Code was completely proprietary with zero open source element. I think the imagined consequences tend to mostly be not that significant for the vast majority of people, at most it would be a blip in the timeline as people switch to something else. The actual consequence (as implied by this article) seems to be people who build their business around these tools, they are entering a particular ecosystem backed by a large corporate and they are leveraging on the big corporates ability to make that ecosystem popular. That kind of is what it is. Pros and Cons.

isodev 4y ago
The consequences for the majority are such that, over time, leading language ecosystems become tied to Microsoft services. One example in the article is the availability of alternative editors and IDEs decreasing over time in favor of extensions to VSCode. Essentially, we are driving towards a monoculture - either you are using VSCode and adjacent services, or you choose an alternative, pay the price of compatibility, and experience paper cuts.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > leading language ecosystems become tied to Microsoft services until a free alternative is developed. Making a freely-licensed language plugin is not inherently hard, it's just a lot of work. You're paying for convenience.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  On the other hand, we now have LSP.
  - oaiey 4y ago
    Their strategy is a mixed bag. They want to maintain that in an open source way but they work very hard that their experience is the best so they can capitalize on that. Not a new playbook.
  - oakpond 4y ago

brundolf 4y ago

This is a good summary of the playing field, but I think they're way overblowing the panic In summary Microsoft has: - Made an incredibly good web-based code editor which is 100% OSS, no strings attached - Made an extensions repository and a bunch of really high quality first-party extensions that have restricted licenses Sure, in a perfect world the whole thing would be fully OSS. But in the worst-case, where people some day decide they want to fork or whatever, we're still much better off than before VSCode. The editor project is a net gain, even if forking means building some of the other bits yourself. This is still a net increase in value for everyone- even if you exclude the restricted parts; not a decrease, much less an apocalypse.

015a 4y ago
I'm not quite as sure. To me, its kind of like saying "well, we don't have to worry about global warming, oil is awesome and if it gets too bad we always have Mars". Which, I can explain a little bit because that analogy maybe only make sense in my head. I can't think of very many, if any, examples in computing history where a project, open source or not, followed the path of "dominating a domain" -> "sponsor does something crappy" -> "the community rallies around a fork" -> "the fork becomes a dominating force in its domain". I'm really sitting here trying to think of examples to help disprove this thesis, and would love to hear them. LibreOffice may be a good example. I can also see an argument for Oracle/proprietary SQL vs MySQL/Postgres. The NodeJS/iojs situation from years ago is, I think, a hallmark case-study in open source that more-so skips the "rally around the fork" step, but is nonetheless worth mentioning. There's probably dozens of examples in the "random esoteric npm library" domain, but those aren't hitting a thousandth the scale that the gigaprojects like VSCode do. There's a far more common path for projects, however. I'll pick on MongoDB as an example; they did something kind of crappy, with their GPL-wearing-a-trenchcoat-proprietary license which, in my experience, all but killed the database for some companies I've contracted with. These companies (users) took that opportunity to move to a truly open source solution, like MySQL. The move, in all cases, was long; arduous; cost a lot of development time; and they were happy in the end. Circling back to the metaphor; there's a hypothetical migration path for anything. Its near-laughably trivial to even list that as a triaging factor for "well, they could be evil, they could turn evil, burning oil could destroy our planet, but at least we have Mars." Computers are turing machines, anything can be rebuilt. That's not the point. If we opt in to an environment which is only deemed acceptable because of a Plan B, it behooves anyone with investment in that environment to think critically about the probability of being forced to implement Plan B, and the cost of that implementation. Circling back to the examples: one is behooved to analyze this through the lens that Plan B may not be the Plan B one thinks it is. If VSCode jumps the shark; will vscodium take its place? MongoDB jumped the shark, and no one was there to catch it; those people who were left wading in the water had to invest significant engineering time transitioning to something entirely different. VSCode is more than just Code; its the users, its the marketing, its the trademark, its the extension standards, its the governing body, maturity, maybe even patents, its all these things which vscodium does not have.

hatuthecat 4y ago

Microsoft can’t seem to kick the old Microsoft no matter how hard they try. They embraced, extended, and now are extinguishing with the python extension.

oaiey 4y ago
It is not EEE. But monopolistic and capitalistic behavior. It is impossible for companies to shake that off.

suction 4y ago

nindalf 4y ago

Good article. The author makes a compelling case about how Microsoft’s strategy isn’t on the up and up. I was never convinced that telemetry was inherently evil, but I do see the downsides of non-OSS language servers. I have only one request of the author and others - please stop citing TIOBE (https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/stop-citing-tiobe/ https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/stop-citing-tiobe/)

shbooms 4y ago

Holy hell, this blog is virtually unreadable. Article content aside, the fact that after pretty much every single paragraph there's 1-2 giant links to some other article and/or an ad is just infurianting and makes it impossible to focus. I stopped reading after the first few and will be adding this site to my blocklist.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
glitchcrab 4y ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this, I actually gave up reading it halfway through because the ads fracture the content far too much - it just doesn't flow.
aembleton 4y ago
I had to add this rule to UBo so I could continue reading ghuntley.com##.kg-bookmark-card
pxc 4y ago
I likewise found this annoying. The giant link previews are especially disruptive on mobile where two in a row can literally take up most of the screen, although they're also obnoxious on the desktop. When I first saw them I thought maybe they were ads, or there was a mistake and I ran into the end of the article early. I liked the post, though! Geoffrey, please reconsider this citation style where you have an ellipsis and then giant link previews. I think it distracts from good content. Could similar link previews upon hover still scratch the itch that drove you to try these link previews?

vikinghckr 4y ago

Meanwhile Google and Facebook internally use VS Code based IDEs as their official developer tooling. Pretty sure their legal teams have considered any legal risks with licensing.

yencabulator 4y ago
Google also uses/used Perforce. They're fine with using commercial & proprietary tools. That's not really the same conversation as here.

golf1052 4y ago

I don't really understand this post. I'm a supporter of open source and free software and I can also understand wanting to avoid vendor lock-in. However I don't understand how this is Microsoft's fault for building closed source tooling. I'm upset with Microsoft's hypocritical stance on .NET and C# being open source without all tooling being open source as well but when it comes to useful tooling like Codespaces, Pylance, or the Java debugger in VSCode I don't see why Microsoft should be blamed them being closed source. Microsoft came into the Java and Python space and made tooling that is being accepted by developers. The author does touch on why companies like Microsoft are able to succeed against open source software. It's because they have the money to pay their own developers to make good software. Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft but not under DevDiv or Azure.

oaiey 4y ago
It is an App Store monopoly problem. Take Google Android as a counterpart. Android Open Source Project = VS Code (MIT codebase( Android at Samsung and dozens other = VS Code with Microsoft EULA Enforced Play Store in vendor phones = VS Code Extension Market Place (not accessible to any other competition) Google offering dominant services = Microsoft Language Packages (both proprietary => user lock in) Google abusing it (eg by marketing, subscriptions, ...) = Microsoft abusing it So what is explained in that article is how you run a monopoly on an open source project. Julia and the DevDiv is doing that. That is understandable (she has to make money to get her bonus) but not good for the rest of us. Disclaimer: .NET fanboy
- blackoil 4y ago
  A major material difference is that unlike phone world wherein a duopoly controls the market and supply chain is also similarly locked. We have a very functional ecosystem of competing products. I can choose to use IntelliJ, Eclipse, Vim, Emacs ... without completely disrupting my life. Tomorrow Intellij may decide to launch paid LSPs for Java/Go/... and MS is already using same components for VSCode and Visual Studio. Or author of GitLens can port his plugin to Intellij or Eclipse

philonoist 4y ago

Even developers are taken for a ride. Just like WhatsApp and Chrome, it all comes down to ripple effects of "If others didn't use it, I can't". I have given a number of examples of this stubborn sticky monopoly below. Every newbie while learning to code: scared of reviews on internet like "I couldn't get help with this editor online or with colleagues and I can't risk being stuck on this project so I switched to VS Code" Every newbie while interviewing: impress interviewers even by a little chance that they use the "industry standard" tool to code. Every experienced developer, even on this HN post, says "It doesn't have excellent support like VS CODE, in remote development, centralized marketplace, etc." I have pieced together and my conclusion comes from the observation below. There is a reason enterprise, rather than startup world use M$ products. The power and money to fight for fairness. Their C#/.NET compiler is open source and excellently designed but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like closed source] VSCODE is open source but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like telemetry and extensions where the real power lies, being closed source] Phone and App market but to with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ it is going to be based on android like Edge on Chromium] VStudio is best IDE but to with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like telemetry + closed source extensions + Heavy + slow + whatnot!] MAUI is Wowza! tool with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like repackage old Xamarin in new branding] OneNote is the best note taking app ever but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like lock in using obscure format and closed source] Every company they acquire but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ Embraaace Exteeend Extin...]

oaiey 4y ago
That is not EEE. But monopolistic behavior.
- philonoist 4y ago
  Yeah, I mean it keeps on adding to the list of complaints and M$ won't budge.
nindalf 4y ago

0x073 4y ago

Microsoft created VSCode and other company's want create a paid saas, but can't easily doing this without have own LSP extensions and marketplace? Seems legit to me.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

The article is alarmist at best. But it does point out one critical point: if you start using the whole ecosystem because of convenience, you may end up reliying on MS Codespace, and therefore lock yourself in. The solution seems simple to me: don't put your entire stack in codespace. Make sure you can easily use your whole stack on your own computer, and migrate easily.

ghusto 4y ago

I was reading [this](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27687450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27687450) yesterday, and somebody said something to the effect that we should trust Microsoft, because they've turned around on OpenSource. That we should judge them by their "years now" actions, instead of the past. I tried to formulate a response to this which explained why we couldn't trust them, and it was all a slow-burn ruse, but gave up. This article explains my feelings well though, especially this part: > Visual Studio Code is a ramp to move the developer tooling ecosystem towards an end-to-end consumable services model of software development tools, and GitHub Codespaces is a white label of an existing service called Visual Studio Online aka Microsoft Dev Box aka Microsoft Azure DevTest Labs That perfectly explains what I've been feeling is coming. Yes, they're playing "nice" now, but it's only so they're allowed through the door. The old model of "embrace, extend, extinguish" has run dry, so now it's "embrace, extend, subscribe".

ta8645 4y ago
embrace, extend, extort?
- ghusto 4y ago
  Haha, I was desperately trying to come up with an 'e' word. That's good enough ;)
  - appleflaxen 4y ago
    maybe "embrace, extend, exploit" works, too.
slowmovintarget 4y ago
So far more subtle than the Docker Desktop Maneuver.