4 ms·

Genuine question with an open mind: why would I use this and not vscode? I know people complain about lag in vscode but I have personally never experienced/not

Genuine question with an open mind: why would I use this and not vscode? I know people complain about lag in vscode but I have personally never experienced/noticed any. So with that in mind what does rider give that vscode cannot?

jw1224 2y ago
I’m a PhpStorm user so not familiar with Rider specifically, but in my experience JetBrains IDEs are exactly that: Integrated Development Environments. Whereas VSCode is more of a code editor first and foremost. There’s tons of overlap between the two, and for casual development VSCode will usually be fine. But as a professional I rely on IDEA to make a living, and it rarely lets me down. 95% of everything I could ever need comes out-of-the-box, so I don’t need to go plugin hunting (though there is a broad range of IDEA plugins too). In fact the IDEA plugins are cross-compatible, so plugins for Rider will work in PhpStorm, PyCharm, Rubymine, etc. The refactoring is outstanding, and leaps beyond what VSCode can do it. Basically it just understands my code like a real developer would. Not just simply checking syntax, but understanding project structure, naming conventions, coding styles, and more. PhpStorm gives me access to a full debugger, with inline breakpoints and execution step controls. “Find Usages” is incredibly thorough and even understands dynamic symbol names in many cases. Also I get a full MySQL and Redis client, right there in the UI. I can click on strings which refer to column names in my code, and they’ll appear in the DB panel instantly. At the end of the day these are power-user features, but I’m glad to have them and feel significantly more productive in a JetBrains IDE. Embracing static analysis and a full IDE was probably the single most beneficial upgrade to my skills and career.
- Contortion 2y ago
  I've tried VS Code and Haystack (based on VS Code) for writing PHP and I just couldn't stand it after having used PhpStorm. Basic things like copying variables, indenting, moving lines into if statements, multiple cursors etc. just aren't intuitive in VS Code when writing PHP and a lot of the things I can do in PhpStorm with the press of a button just aren't possible. I really hope they move PhpStorm to the same payment model as Rider so I can also use it for my own non-work projects.
- no_wizard 2y ago
  Last time I tried using Php with VSCode it couldn’t even do basic autocomplete or imports. Granted it’s been 2 years but has it evolved since then even? PhpStorm was superior out of the box as recently as 2 years ago, is another way of putting it
guytv 2y ago
Superior: * Debugging * Refactoring
- corytheboyd 2y ago
  Specifically, out of the box, these things work, and work exceptionally well. In my experience you can get 80% of the way there in VSCode, but it requires compromise and time, which I’m personally willing to throw money at to make go away.
metalliqaz 2y ago
I believe the JetBrains equivalent of VSCode is Fleet, which is already free. In other words, their code editor.
kdnsndndj 2y ago
They are completely different products? One is an IDE, the other is an editor. If you want an editor, of course you will not be happy if you use an IDE
- johnfn 2y ago
  The claim that VSCode was just an editor seemed flimsy the day it was released. Now, it is absurd.
  - switch007 2y ago
    DE perhaps, with some effort. Not very I
ActionHank 2y ago
It's difficult to quantify, but to me (large C# & TS projects) the difference between working in Rider vs VSCode is the difference between Notepad and VSCode. The difference is big. Also, often I think to myself "I wish feature X was available", only to find that it is and has been for a while in Jetbrains products.
- evoke4908 2y ago
  I think I've only installed five plugins ever in Jetbrains. All for totally reasonable things like embedded development and debugging. There's no real need for any plugins because everything I need for my workflows is included out of the box. It even has support for build agents in docker or bare metal either locally or remote. It includes remote GDB debugging. I can with a single button launch a docker container on a remote server which cross-compiles, uploads the binary to my tablet, launches the app with GDB attached and gives me normal debugging tools including breakpoints and a console. All out of the box with no dependencies required apart from docker.
butz 2y ago
I've ditched PhpStorm licence quite a while ago after I stopped working with PHP. Tried using VS Code for personal JS projects, but I had to install a few plugins to make it more efficient and still having a strange issue on Linux, when Terminal panel is open, whole code editor feels sluggish. I don't really like how IntelliSense works on VS Code, but that's on me, as there's a plugin or some setting somewhere to fix it. Also VS Code creates several strange directories in my $HOME directory, even when running in portable mode. From application size perspective - VS Code is marginally smaller, and starts a bit faster than IntelliJ IDE. But SublimeText is even smaller and runs circles around big IDEs, not to mention how good it is at handling large text files. At this day and age it comes to personal preference. It is great that new developers have a wide choice of IDEs freely available.
Auracle 2y ago
For Unity, the integration just works and works well.
switch007 2y ago
I've never understood the value proposition of vscode: "Download an editor and install a random collection of dodgy looking plugins from random authors that will get you maybe 80% of the functionality you want Enjoy watching the plugins downloading random .exes from all over the place Any semi-advanced functionality is hidden in a complicated command palette system and a plethora of JSON files Groovy support? Haha! You're funny Need to view data in other format than a list/tree view? Get fucked Good luck!"
- wiseowise 2y ago
  > Groovy support? Haha! You're funny Thank God at least someone speeds up eradication of this abomination from mainstream ecosystem.
madeofpalk 2y ago
Rider is so much smarter than anything Microsoft has made. It was much better IntelliSense-like features than Visual Studio/code.
ezst 2y ago
My very personal opinion is that LSPs haven't contributed very much in the area of turning text editors into cohesive and integrated development environments that I enjoy using. One still gets to spend a lot of time and energy fishing for the right extensions, some with overlapping or incompatible scopes and capabilities. And this to be repeated for every project, framework and language. That's very ad-hoc, unsatisfactory, and the extent to which plugins can "do their thing" is generally superficial and limiting, setting the bar very low for what's possible to do (an example of that is how many plugins inform about their state via dumps of logs into ever piling and popping up consoles, this is very distracting and suboptimal). The other paradigm is to have actual tooling and UX specialists having put time and effort curating a developer experience that is as smooth and distraction free as possible. And in my experience with the JetBrains IDEs, that doesn't even come at the cost of extensibility (you still have support, either official or community-based, for esoteric stacks and languages, and those can piggyback on the more sophisticated and adequate UX palette). What should be the deciding factor is the resource consumption, then: if you end up with a less refined and less capable LSP+Extension enhanced text editor, it better be lightweight, right? Well, here again it's pretty clear that those LSPs and Extensions are everything but that, and not only JetBrains IDEs start fast (which was a big area of focus recently), they also respond better using comparable resources. Just to be clear, I don't hate vscode, I have it installed, but the extent I use it is very limited because it sits in this uncanny valley where it's too bloated for one-off editing of small things like config files (for which I use vim) and editing whole projects folders (for which it's far from delivering as good an experience as an IDE)
- wiseowise 2y ago
  > What should be the deciding factor is the resource consumption, then: if you end up with a less refined and less capable LSP+Extension enhanced text editor, it better be lightweight, right? Well, here again it's pretty clear that those LSPs and Extensions are everything but that, and not only JetBrains IDEs start fast (which was a big area of focus recently), they also respond better using comparable resources. What kind of nonsense is that, lmao. JetBrains IDEs absolutely choke on our Java monorepo out of the box and you have to rely on huge hacks to make it work. While VScode works just fine and stays responsive while indexing in background allowing to move around and modify files without any lag. And GOD FORBID you close it, open it again and be greeted with 30 minutes of “indexing”. Their tooling is so great, that they had to migrate their homebrew Java tooling in CLion to clangd (C++ LSP) based indexer. Android Studio is another level of awful and if someone would release Kotlin LSP I’d migrate in an instant. But of course JetBrains won’t release it, because it doesn’t drive IDE sales.
urbandw311er 2y ago
If you mean for .NET development, there’s still light years between vscode and this. Whereas .NET extensions for vscode are still in their infancy, Rider has been creating a comprehensive IDE for .NET to rival the full edition of Visual Stdio for years. We are talking full Solution file support, Nuget, majorly advanced refactoring via Resharper, pretty much everything you could wish for. And it runs on a Mac!
- seabrookmx 2y ago
  It sounds like you haven't used the C# extensions in a while. VSCode has Solution File and Nuget support with the C# Dev Kit. Refactoring isn't bad either though not as featureful as I remember from Resharper.
  - urbandw311er 2y ago
    Cool - vscode is nice and I use it all the time for other stacks, but - for .NET - relying on an ecosystem of third party extensions is never going to provide that unified experience that you get from a purpose-built IDE. Try both and you’ll see what I mean. The love poured into Rider is obvious.
pjerem 2y ago
Honestly ? It’s hard to describe. It just works. C# solutions ? You have them. Git ? You have it. Jira ? Integrated. Want your branch to be named after your jira ticket ? It’s built in. A missing .NET framework ? You can install it in one click. You don’t have to install any plugin to be productive. Though there is a rich ecosystem of plugins but it’s more to allow you to install "bonus" integrations and features where in VSCode it’s necessary because you basically have to build your own IDE. If you don’t install anything, it’s like VS : open your project, click on build, it’s built. Just try it, in the first start you’ll be asked which keyboard bindings you want to use, just choose VSCode and you’ll feel at home.
popcalc 2y ago
It runs on Linux. That’s enough for me..
- Loocid 2y ago
  So does VSCode though. Are you thinking of Visual Studio?
  - popcalc 2y ago
    VS code compared to studio for dotnet dev is comparing a tractor to a trike.
    - Loocid 2y ago
      I agree, but the comment you are replying to was asking for the differences between VSCode and Rider. "It runs on Linux" is not one of those.
wiseowise 2y ago
> I know people complain about lag in vscode but I have personally never experienced/noticed any. Start using JetBrains products - you’ll experience many. And before I get rained with downvotes I’ve been using JetBrains on various machines for over 10 years. From netbook with Cameron and 2GB of RAM to M1 Pro and M3 MacBooks with 32 GB of RAM.
raincole 2y ago
It integrates all the components you need for Unity development very well (I haven't used it with Godot or Unreal yet). The old saying: there are no IDEs, only code editors and Jetbrains products.
mattlondon 2y ago
Replying to myself: Interesting to see so many comments talking about extensions, and how you don't need to install any. In vscode I only have the remote development extensions installed, and I think those come "built in" anyway. I just use a vanilla clean vscode install and its an absolute pleasure to use. If extensions (or lack of) are the main reason given for not using vscode, then for me at least as someone who does not use extensions in vscode and just use it "as is", there seems to be no benefit. I guess this lack of any actual incremental value to the average typical end user of vscode (i.e. someone who can just use vscode as-is without needing to install loads of plugins and customizations...) is why they are now giving rider away for free.
- zuhsetaqi 2y ago
  What exactly do you use VS Code for?

jw1224 2y ago

I’m a PhpStorm user so not familiar with Rider specifically, but in my experience JetBrains IDEs are exactly that: Integrated Development Environments. Whereas VSCode is more of a code editor first and foremost. There’s tons of overlap between the two, and for casual development VSCode will usually be fine. But as a professional I rely on IDEA to make a living, and it rarely lets me down. 95% of everything I could ever need comes out-of-the-box, so I don’t need to go plugin hunting (though there is a broad range of IDEA plugins too). In fact the IDEA plugins are cross-compatible, so plugins for Rider will work in PhpStorm, PyCharm, Rubymine, etc. The refactoring is outstanding, and leaps beyond what VSCode can do it. Basically it just understands my code like a real developer would. Not just simply checking syntax, but understanding project structure, naming conventions, coding styles, and more. PhpStorm gives me access to a full debugger, with inline breakpoints and execution step controls. “Find Usages” is incredibly thorough and even understands dynamic symbol names in many cases. Also I get a full MySQL and Redis client, right there in the UI. I can click on strings which refer to column names in my code, and they’ll appear in the DB panel instantly. At the end of the day these are power-user features, but I’m glad to have them and feel significantly more productive in a JetBrains IDE. Embracing static analysis and a full IDE was probably the single most beneficial upgrade to my skills and career.

Contortion 2y ago
I've tried VS Code and Haystack (based on VS Code) for writing PHP and I just couldn't stand it after having used PhpStorm. Basic things like copying variables, indenting, moving lines into if statements, multiple cursors etc. just aren't intuitive in VS Code when writing PHP and a lot of the things I can do in PhpStorm with the press of a button just aren't possible. I really hope they move PhpStorm to the same payment model as Rider so I can also use it for my own non-work projects.
no_wizard 2y ago
Last time I tried using Php with VSCode it couldn’t even do basic autocomplete or imports. Granted it’s been 2 years but has it evolved since then even? PhpStorm was superior out of the box as recently as 2 years ago, is another way of putting it

guytv 2y ago

Superior: * Debugging * Refactoring

corytheboyd 2y ago
Specifically, out of the box, these things work, and work exceptionally well. In my experience you can get 80% of the way there in VSCode, but it requires compromise and time, which I’m personally willing to throw money at to make go away.

metalliqaz 2y ago

I believe the JetBrains equivalent of VSCode is Fleet, which is already free. In other words, their code editor.

kdnsndndj 2y ago

They are completely different products? One is an IDE, the other is an editor. If you want an editor, of course you will not be happy if you use an IDE

johnfn 2y ago
The claim that VSCode was just an editor seemed flimsy the day it was released. Now, it is absurd.
- switch007 2y ago
  DE perhaps, with some effort. Not very I

ActionHank 2y ago

It's difficult to quantify, but to me (large C# & TS projects) the difference between working in Rider vs VSCode is the difference between Notepad and VSCode. The difference is big. Also, often I think to myself "I wish feature X was available", only to find that it is and has been for a while in Jetbrains products.

evoke4908 2y ago
I think I've only installed five plugins ever in Jetbrains. All for totally reasonable things like embedded development and debugging. There's no real need for any plugins because everything I need for my workflows is included out of the box. It even has support for build agents in docker or bare metal either locally or remote. It includes remote GDB debugging. I can with a single button launch a docker container on a remote server which cross-compiles, uploads the binary to my tablet, launches the app with GDB attached and gives me normal debugging tools including breakpoints and a console. All out of the box with no dependencies required apart from docker.

butz 2y ago

I've ditched PhpStorm licence quite a while ago after I stopped working with PHP. Tried using VS Code for personal JS projects, but I had to install a few plugins to make it more efficient and still having a strange issue on Linux, when Terminal panel is open, whole code editor feels sluggish. I don't really like how IntelliSense works on VS Code, but that's on me, as there's a plugin or some setting somewhere to fix it. Also VS Code creates several strange directories in my $HOME directory, even when running in portable mode. From application size perspective - VS Code is marginally smaller, and starts a bit faster than IntelliJ IDE. But SublimeText is even smaller and runs circles around big IDEs, not to mention how good it is at handling large text files. At this day and age it comes to personal preference. It is great that new developers have a wide choice of IDEs freely available.

Auracle 2y ago

For Unity, the integration just works and works well.

switch007 2y ago

I've never understood the value proposition of vscode: "Download an editor and install a random collection of dodgy looking plugins from random authors that will get you maybe 80% of the functionality you want Enjoy watching the plugins downloading random .exes from all over the place Any semi-advanced functionality is hidden in a complicated command palette system and a plethora of JSON files Groovy support? Haha! You're funny Need to view data in other format than a list/tree view? Get fucked Good luck!"

wiseowise 2y ago
> Groovy support? Haha! You're funny Thank God at least someone speeds up eradication of this abomination from mainstream ecosystem.

madeofpalk 2y ago

Rider is so much smarter than anything Microsoft has made. It was much better IntelliSense-like features than Visual Studio/code.

ezst 2y ago

My very personal opinion is that LSPs haven't contributed very much in the area of turning text editors into cohesive and integrated development environments that I enjoy using. One still gets to spend a lot of time and energy fishing for the right extensions, some with overlapping or incompatible scopes and capabilities. And this to be repeated for every project, framework and language. That's very ad-hoc, unsatisfactory, and the extent to which plugins can "do their thing" is generally superficial and limiting, setting the bar very low for what's possible to do (an example of that is how many plugins inform about their state via dumps of logs into ever piling and popping up consoles, this is very distracting and suboptimal). The other paradigm is to have actual tooling and UX specialists having put time and effort curating a developer experience that is as smooth and distraction free as possible. And in my experience with the JetBrains IDEs, that doesn't even come at the cost of extensibility (you still have support, either official or community-based, for esoteric stacks and languages, and those can piggyback on the more sophisticated and adequate UX palette). What should be the deciding factor is the resource consumption, then: if you end up with a less refined and less capable LSP+Extension enhanced text editor, it better be lightweight, right? Well, here again it's pretty clear that those LSPs and Extensions are everything but that, and not only JetBrains IDEs start fast (which was a big area of focus recently), they also respond better using comparable resources. Just to be clear, I don't hate vscode, I have it installed, but the extent I use it is very limited because it sits in this uncanny valley where it's too bloated for one-off editing of small things like config files (for which I use vim) and editing whole projects folders (for which it's far from delivering as good an experience as an IDE)

wiseowise 2y ago
> What should be the deciding factor is the resource consumption, then: if you end up with a less refined and less capable LSP+Extension enhanced text editor, it better be lightweight, right? Well, here again it's pretty clear that those LSPs and Extensions are everything but that, and not only JetBrains IDEs start fast (which was a big area of focus recently), they also respond better using comparable resources. What kind of nonsense is that, lmao. JetBrains IDEs absolutely choke on our Java monorepo out of the box and you have to rely on huge hacks to make it work. While VScode works just fine and stays responsive while indexing in background allowing to move around and modify files without any lag. And GOD FORBID you close it, open it again and be greeted with 30 minutes of “indexing”. Their tooling is so great, that they had to migrate their homebrew Java tooling in CLion to clangd (C++ LSP) based indexer. Android Studio is another level of awful and if someone would release Kotlin LSP I’d migrate in an instant. But of course JetBrains won’t release it, because it doesn’t drive IDE sales.

urbandw311er 2y ago

If you mean for .NET development, there’s still light years between vscode and this. Whereas .NET extensions for vscode are still in their infancy, Rider has been creating a comprehensive IDE for .NET to rival the full edition of Visual Stdio for years. We are talking full Solution file support, Nuget, majorly advanced refactoring via Resharper, pretty much everything you could wish for. And it runs on a Mac!

seabrookmx 2y ago
It sounds like you haven't used the C# extensions in a while. VSCode has Solution File and Nuget support with the C# Dev Kit. Refactoring isn't bad either though not as featureful as I remember from Resharper.
- urbandw311er 2y ago
  Cool - vscode is nice and I use it all the time for other stacks, but - for .NET - relying on an ecosystem of third party extensions is never going to provide that unified experience that you get from a purpose-built IDE. Try both and you’ll see what I mean. The love poured into Rider is obvious.

pjerem 2y ago

Honestly ? It’s hard to describe. It just works. C# solutions ? You have them. Git ? You have it. Jira ? Integrated. Want your branch to be named after your jira ticket ? It’s built in. A missing .NET framework ? You can install it in one click. You don’t have to install any plugin to be productive. Though there is a rich ecosystem of plugins but it’s more to allow you to install "bonus" integrations and features where in VSCode it’s necessary because you basically have to build your own IDE. If you don’t install anything, it’s like VS : open your project, click on build, it’s built. Just try it, in the first start you’ll be asked which keyboard bindings you want to use, just choose VSCode and you’ll feel at home.

popcalc 2y ago

It runs on Linux. That’s enough for me..

Loocid 2y ago
So does VSCode though. Are you thinking of Visual Studio?
- popcalc 2y ago
  VS code compared to studio for dotnet dev is comparing a tractor to a trike.
  - Loocid 2y ago
    I agree, but the comment you are replying to was asking for the differences between VSCode and Rider. "It runs on Linux" is not one of those.

wiseowise 2y ago

> I know people complain about lag in vscode but I have personally never experienced/noticed any. Start using JetBrains products - you’ll experience many. And before I get rained with downvotes I’ve been using JetBrains on various machines for over 10 years. From netbook with Cameron and 2GB of RAM to M1 Pro and M3 MacBooks with 32 GB of RAM.

raincole 2y ago

It integrates all the components you need for Unity development very well (I haven't used it with Godot or Unreal yet). The old saying: there are no IDEs, only code editors and Jetbrains products.

mattlondon 2y ago

Replying to myself: Interesting to see so many comments talking about extensions, and how you don't need to install any. In vscode I only have the remote development extensions installed, and I think those come "built in" anyway. I just use a vanilla clean vscode install and its an absolute pleasure to use. If extensions (or lack of) are the main reason given for not using vscode, then for me at least as someone who does not use extensions in vscode and just use it "as is", there seems to be no benefit. I guess this lack of any actual incremental value to the average typical end user of vscode (i.e. someone who can just use vscode as-is without needing to install loads of plugins and customizations...) is why they are now giving rider away for free.

zuhsetaqi 2y ago
What exactly do you use VS Code for?