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Anyone think there'll be another editor that'll surpass VSCode, similar to how VSCode surpassed Atom (and others)? I used to think that there would be one, but

Anyone think there'll be another editor that'll surpass VSCode, similar to how VSCode surpassed Atom (and others)? I used to think that there would be one, but now I'm not so sure.

matkoniecz 4y ago
Why there would not be?
aniforprez 4y ago
There's many editors in this space that are trying to do similar things but built in Rust, Go and such. They're all nascent projects and all extremely immature to the point that I installed them all and immediately removed them but they show promise. There's Lapce, Zed, Fleet and Nova which are all native apps without Electron but having tried them all out, they're lacking in one way or another
- maegul 4y ago
  Seeing recently Onivim 2 die and Brackets too (I don’t know much about that project, but it was Adobe backed FWIW) reminds me that these things can come and go. Getting people to become users and getting plug-in authors to invest their time seems like a nightmare. It’s surely no coincidence that VS Code was backed by a mega corp.
nicce 4y ago
JetBrain's Fleet looks very promising. Does many things better out of the box than VSCode with gazillion of extensions. Too bad that popular keybindings are not supported properly yet.
- aniforprez 4y ago
  As of writing this comment, Fleet doesn't even have an option to render leading whitespace characters. Fleet does almost nothing better out of the box right now. It's incredibly slow to load projects, slower than VSCode to start (tested on an M1 mac), has a fraction of a fraction of the settings and features and no extension support. There's a LONG way to go
ericcholis 4y ago
I think that the market share of "new" IDEs is pretty well established between VSCode, Sublime and the various Jetbrains offerings.
- minusf 4y ago
  is sublime an IDE? i guess i could call my neovim python setup an IDE, but i don't.
  - BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
    I think it makes to count any editor with an LSP client as an “IDE” and call a day rather than engage in endless, meaningless debates on subjective terminology
  - josephd79 4y ago
    what's the difference between vscode/sublime and an IDE? Honest question, not being sarcastic.
maegul 4y ago
No, I think they’ve won this cycle in the same way that Windows and Google did theirs. The only issue for them is that it’s still text editing under the hood, which is a fundamental enough of a tool that there’ll always be alternatives scratching away at their supremacy (unlike an operating system for instance). So copilot and good LSP servers are probably big factors in their dominance. Still seems like a market shift would be required to take them down, like an AI revolution, but then MS seem to be on top of that so far. Perhaps if CI/CD is reinvented in a wonderful way with mass adoption, integrated code editing and manipulation could reshape the text editor.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  lsp actually came out of the .net opensource community. omnisharp to be exact. It's funny how much is actually attributed to MS in this case, when most of VSCode did not originate there. There's no reason at all why VSCode has "won" the same way Windows and Google did. VSCode fixed two main issues of Atom. If anything it was a natural evolution. The name was just a smart marketing play. There are some things that are exclusive VSCode but most of the important pieces are not. I think the main reason there is no direct VSCode competitor is because there is currently no need to. People that use their own respective flavours of editors have almost the same features in their own respective features, so what's the point in mirroring it?
  - maegul 4y ago
    Fair. Like I said, it’s a text editor and only does things so much “better” than their competitors who are likely to retain their user bases to some extent. We seem to generally agree on this. But the ecosystem effects of GitHub integration and getting into the browser as is the case with the top parent post and being the home for LSP servers seem to me like enough of an “embrace” to secure a “win” however lesser it is than Google’s. I’m not a user though, just my view from the outside.
numbsafari 4y ago
Eventually someone will develop an IDE with a proper sandbox for plugins and extensions, rather than the free-for-all that is VSCode.
morelisp 4y ago
I see your profile says you’re in your early 20s, so I kind of understand the question but also I’ll be blunt: yes, there will be another text editor. 90% of the tools you use today will be gone by the end of your career.
- brabel 4y ago
  Exactly what I thought reading that comment... but there will still be some older people sticking to it for perhaps a decade or two... just like we have people today still using emacs (guilty) and Vim. Not sure if VS Code will last nearly as long as those, it's really hard to stay around for 40+ years (anyone here using ed, Eclipse, Sublime, Netbeans??? I am sure there are a few, but the number is dropping fast).
- azalemeth 4y ago
  And the remainder will be called things like vim, emacs, awk, and sed ;-)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    I forgot the name of the principal, but there's a rule of thumb that a thing's future life expectancy is related to how long they've already been around. So in general if some new text editor emerges, I give it a reasonable chance of being dead in 6 months. VSC is old enough to probably be around for a while now. And I fully expect emacs and vi/m to outlive me:)
    - rileyphone 4y ago
      Lindy effect.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    Even awk is slowly but surely on the way out at this point... sed probably has another strong decade though.
Shorel 4y ago
It depends on who you ask. Personally, I still prefer Sublime Text to VSCode. Now, the problem is ST is proprietary, but then VSCode is starting to be proprietary as well.
- silverwind 4y ago
  Sublime Text is still considerable faster than VSCode, and also has LSP via plugins, but its development again has grinded to a halt, which seems to be something that happens periodically when the team decides to focus on other products.
sph 4y ago
What will get bigger than VSCode is the wrong question to ask. Eventually it'll be unmaintained and people will have moved onto something else. The only constants in the editor mindshare circus are Emacs and vim, and even those will fade away, one day, much later than VSCode.
- bauerd 4y ago
  This is just begging the question why VS code would become unmaintained
levesque 4y ago
To me VSCode is not comparable to Pycharm for Python programming & debugging. Pycharm just works better and has much better code completion.
- CrimpCity 4y ago
  pycharm is also MUCH smarter figuring out import paths.
screamingninja 4y ago
> Anyone think there'll be another editor that'll surpass VSCode Worthy mention- Zed is the spiritual successful of Atom that is being rewritten in Rust. Text editors gain and lose popularity often, so the potential is definitely there. https://zed.dev/ https://zed.dev/
- FpUser 4y ago
  Rust - I would not give rat's ass about what language was used to write an IDE as long as it performs adequately. VS Code definitely does it. I for example can comfortable edit, compile and debug my code written in C++ and other languages locally and on remote servers with fast turnaround. VS code is the closest thing ever to come to a full blown modern IDE. Replicating this complete functionality and plugin ecosystem will not be easy. I would not even bother looking at things like Zed unless it can do the same things.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    Rust is pretty much the most important programming language in the world right now. Using it to eliminate entire classes of bugs is a huge win for developers everywhere.
    - FpUser 4y ago
      As already said I do not care. I would not trade shitty app written in "proper" language over one that is not but does the actual useful work for me. >"...eliminate entire classes of bugs..." With modern C++, static analyzers and address sanitizers this aspect of Rust does not matter that much for me personally. As a language Rust looks way more restricted to me than a modern C++ and dancing around borrow checker is far from fun. Unless explicitly required by contract I do not see it as a business case with positive ROI for me. I run my own company and I actually pay for development.
    - 12345hn6789 4y ago
      This is a pretty enormous statement. Programming languages are tools and not every tool suits every job. Rust is certainly a "good" language but it will not change the world. In 10 years perhaps we can resume this conversation with some actual substance.
lallysingh 4y ago
With language servers, I think the big IDEs will be less relevant. It'll be easier for anyone to write a text editor with language server integration and make it with just the way they like.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  You're forgetting the actual heavy lifting that proper IDEs do, and that VS Code leaves to language implementors. Unless you know how to do proper code analysis, you won't be able to make it "just the way you like". Even writing a proper IDE-aware compiler is a quite a daunting task.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
StevePerkins 4y ago
At the end of the day, VS Code is a shitty Electron app. It's one of the most highly optimized and performant Electron apps ever created... but it's still a shitty Electron app. Startup time on my machine is only a hair faster than Jetbrains IDE's launching a JVM, it's ridiculous. VS Code has the market share that it has because: 1. They encouraged a huge plugin ecosystem. 2. They made it cross-platform and gave it away for free, while Sublime costs money. 3. Most importantly of all (in my cynical opinion), they went "dark mode" by default at just the right time when this was becoming a trendy new feature among devs. There are plenty of text editors that are far better than VS Code, but they either cost money or are for a single platform only. If someone came out with a free, cross-platform, attractive text editor that was a native executable and got critical mass going with a plugin ecosystem, then VS Code would fall out of fashion within a year. There's no genuine groundswell of support for Microsoft as a trendy entity with brand loyalty among young devs. The recent boomer adage "No one wants to work anymore" simply has its sad technical analogue, "No one wants to create desktop apps anymore".
- goguy 4y ago
  > If someone came out with a free, cross-platform, attractive text editor that was a native executable and got critical mass going with a plugin ecosystem, then VS Code would fall out of fashion within a year. Well yeah, there's the problem. This isn't an easy task, it has never been done before.
  - StevePerkins 4y ago
    It's been done with Vim and Emacs, among others. Full desktop GUI versions, in addition to the original terminal-based form. It just hasn't been done RECENTLY... with an editor that is visually attractive, and uses modern keyboard conventions rather than arcane keystroke DSL's that are inaccessible for the masses. But that's just a matter of project philosophy, not technical limitations with what's doable.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      This is definitely the first time I've ever seen the adjective 'attractive' applied to either vim or emacs.

Anyone think there'll be another editor that'll surpass VSCode, similar to how VSCode surpassed Atom (and others)? I used to think that there would be one, but now I'm not so sure.

matkoniecz 4y ago

Why there would not be?

aniforprez 4y ago

There's many editors in this space that are trying to do similar things but built in Rust, Go and such. They're all nascent projects and all extremely immature to the point that I installed them all and immediately removed them but they show promise. There's Lapce, Zed, Fleet and Nova which are all native apps without Electron but having tried them all out, they're lacking in one way or another

maegul 4y ago
Seeing recently Onivim 2 die and Brackets too (I don’t know much about that project, but it was Adobe backed FWIW) reminds me that these things can come and go. Getting people to become users and getting plug-in authors to invest their time seems like a nightmare. It’s surely no coincidence that VS Code was backed by a mega corp.

nicce 4y ago

JetBrain's Fleet looks very promising. Does many things better out of the box than VSCode with gazillion of extensions. Too bad that popular keybindings are not supported properly yet.

aniforprez 4y ago
As of writing this comment, Fleet doesn't even have an option to render leading whitespace characters. Fleet does almost nothing better out of the box right now. It's incredibly slow to load projects, slower than VSCode to start (tested on an M1 mac), has a fraction of a fraction of the settings and features and no extension support. There's a LONG way to go

ericcholis 4y ago

I think that the market share of "new" IDEs is pretty well established between VSCode, Sublime and the various Jetbrains offerings.

minusf 4y ago
is sublime an IDE? i guess i could call my neovim python setup an IDE, but i don't.
- BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
  I think it makes to count any editor with an LSP client as an “IDE” and call a day rather than engage in endless, meaningless debates on subjective terminology
- josephd79 4y ago
  what's the difference between vscode/sublime and an IDE? Honest question, not being sarcastic.

maegul 4y ago

No, I think they’ve won this cycle in the same way that Windows and Google did theirs. The only issue for them is that it’s still text editing under the hood, which is a fundamental enough of a tool that there’ll always be alternatives scratching away at their supremacy (unlike an operating system for instance). So copilot and good LSP servers are probably big factors in their dominance. Still seems like a market shift would be required to take them down, like an AI revolution, but then MS seem to be on top of that so far. Perhaps if CI/CD is reinvented in a wonderful way with mass adoption, integrated code editing and manipulation could reshape the text editor.

rjzzleep 4y ago
lsp actually came out of the .net opensource community. omnisharp to be exact. It's funny how much is actually attributed to MS in this case, when most of VSCode did not originate there. There's no reason at all why VSCode has "won" the same way Windows and Google did. VSCode fixed two main issues of Atom. If anything it was a natural evolution. The name was just a smart marketing play. There are some things that are exclusive VSCode but most of the important pieces are not. I think the main reason there is no direct VSCode competitor is because there is currently no need to. People that use their own respective flavours of editors have almost the same features in their own respective features, so what's the point in mirroring it?
- maegul 4y ago
  Fair. Like I said, it’s a text editor and only does things so much “better” than their competitors who are likely to retain their user bases to some extent. We seem to generally agree on this. But the ecosystem effects of GitHub integration and getting into the browser as is the case with the top parent post and being the home for LSP servers seem to me like enough of an “embrace” to secure a “win” however lesser it is than Google’s. I’m not a user though, just my view from the outside.

numbsafari 4y ago

Eventually someone will develop an IDE with a proper sandbox for plugins and extensions, rather than the free-for-all that is VSCode.

morelisp 4y ago

I see your profile says you’re in your early 20s, so I kind of understand the question but also I’ll be blunt: yes, there will be another text editor. 90% of the tools you use today will be gone by the end of your career.

brabel 4y ago
Exactly what I thought reading that comment... but there will still be some older people sticking to it for perhaps a decade or two... just like we have people today still using emacs (guilty) and Vim. Not sure if VS Code will last nearly as long as those, it's really hard to stay around for 40+ years (anyone here using ed, Eclipse, Sublime, Netbeans??? I am sure there are a few, but the number is dropping fast).
azalemeth 4y ago
And the remainder will be called things like vim, emacs, awk, and sed ;-)
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  I forgot the name of the principal, but there's a rule of thumb that a thing's future life expectancy is related to how long they've already been around. So in general if some new text editor emerges, I give it a reasonable chance of being dead in 6 months. VSC is old enough to probably be around for a while now. And I fully expect emacs and vi/m to outlive me:)
  - rileyphone 4y ago
    Lindy effect.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Even awk is slowly but surely on the way out at this point... sed probably has another strong decade though.

Shorel 4y ago

It depends on who you ask. Personally, I still prefer Sublime Text to VSCode. Now, the problem is ST is proprietary, but then VSCode is starting to be proprietary as well.

silverwind 4y ago
Sublime Text is still considerable faster than VSCode, and also has LSP via plugins, but its development again has grinded to a halt, which seems to be something that happens periodically when the team decides to focus on other products.

sph 4y ago

What will get bigger than VSCode is the wrong question to ask. Eventually it'll be unmaintained and people will have moved onto something else. The only constants in the editor mindshare circus are Emacs and vim, and even those will fade away, one day, much later than VSCode.

bauerd 4y ago
This is just begging the question why VS code would become unmaintained

levesque 4y ago

To me VSCode is not comparable to Pycharm for Python programming & debugging. Pycharm just works better and has much better code completion.

CrimpCity 4y ago
pycharm is also MUCH smarter figuring out import paths.

screamingninja 4y ago

> Anyone think there'll be another editor that'll surpass VSCode Worthy mention- Zed is the spiritual successful of Atom that is being rewritten in Rust. Text editors gain and lose popularity often, so the potential is definitely there. https://zed.dev/ https://zed.dev/

FpUser 4y ago
Rust - I would not give rat's ass about what language was used to write an IDE as long as it performs adequately. VS Code definitely does it. I for example can comfortable edit, compile and debug my code written in C++ and other languages locally and on remote servers with fast turnaround. VS code is the closest thing ever to come to a full blown modern IDE. Replicating this complete functionality and plugin ecosystem will not be easy. I would not even bother looking at things like Zed unless it can do the same things.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Rust is pretty much the most important programming language in the world right now. Using it to eliminate entire classes of bugs is a huge win for developers everywhere.
  - FpUser 4y ago
    As already said I do not care. I would not trade shitty app written in "proper" language over one that is not but does the actual useful work for me. >"...eliminate entire classes of bugs..." With modern C++, static analyzers and address sanitizers this aspect of Rust does not matter that much for me personally. As a language Rust looks way more restricted to me than a modern C++ and dancing around borrow checker is far from fun. Unless explicitly required by contract I do not see it as a business case with positive ROI for me. I run my own company and I actually pay for development.
  - 12345hn6789 4y ago
    This is a pretty enormous statement. Programming languages are tools and not every tool suits every job. Rust is certainly a "good" language but it will not change the world. In 10 years perhaps we can resume this conversation with some actual substance.

lallysingh 4y ago

With language servers, I think the big IDEs will be less relevant. It'll be easier for anyone to write a text editor with language server integration and make it with just the way they like.

dmitriid 4y ago
You're forgetting the actual heavy lifting that proper IDEs do, and that VS Code leaves to language implementors. Unless you know how to do proper code analysis, you won't be able to make it "just the way you like". Even writing a proper IDE-aware compiler is a quite a daunting task.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

StevePerkins 4y ago

At the end of the day, VS Code is a shitty Electron app. It's one of the most highly optimized and performant Electron apps ever created... but it's still a shitty Electron app. Startup time on my machine is only a hair faster than Jetbrains IDE's launching a JVM, it's ridiculous. VS Code has the market share that it has because: 1. They encouraged a huge plugin ecosystem. 2. They made it cross-platform and gave it away for free, while Sublime costs money. 3. Most importantly of all (in my cynical opinion), they went "dark mode" by default at just the right time when this was becoming a trendy new feature among devs. There are plenty of text editors that are far better than VS Code, but they either cost money or are for a single platform only. If someone came out with a free, cross-platform, attractive text editor that was a native executable and got critical mass going with a plugin ecosystem, then VS Code would fall out of fashion within a year. There's no genuine groundswell of support for Microsoft as a trendy entity with brand loyalty among young devs. The recent boomer adage "No one wants to work anymore" simply has its sad technical analogue, "No one wants to create desktop apps anymore".

goguy 4y ago
> If someone came out with a free, cross-platform, attractive text editor that was a native executable and got critical mass going with a plugin ecosystem, then VS Code would fall out of fashion within a year. Well yeah, there's the problem. This isn't an easy task, it has never been done before.
- StevePerkins 4y ago
  It's been done with Vim and Emacs, among others. Full desktop GUI versions, in addition to the original terminal-based form. It just hasn't been done RECENTLY... with an editor that is visually attractive, and uses modern keyboard conventions rather than arcane keystroke DSL's that are inaccessible for the masses. But that's just a matter of project philosophy, not technical limitations with what's doable.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    This is definitely the first time I've ever seen the adjective 'attractive' applied to either vim or emacs.