13 ms·

Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

243 points by Dotnaught 1y ago

3np 1y ago
Reminder: https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
kstrauser 1y ago
And this is why I'm using Zed today. I'm deadly serious. I was a huge proponent of VSCode at first but I've soured on it, and now I don't want my workflow to depend on it in any way. Awesome software, but I don't trust the upstream org further than I must.
- lysace 1y ago
  Still using VSCode, but you kind of know that's it's going to go sour eventually. It is Microsoft. :/ I figure e.g. emacs will always be there when that happens. All I need is a Github Copilot clone and a good code search feature. Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when switching between git branches. Oh and the ssh remote extension.
  - znpy 1y ago
    Emacs user here, have used vscode in the past. Yep, vscode is more intuitive. However emacs is mostly the kind of thing you dedicate a couple of months of discomfort and enjoy for the rest of your life. Quite literally. Spending some money on the “mastering emacs” book (https://www.masteringemacs.org/ https://www.masteringemacs.org/) is worth imho. Bonus point: little by little you start enjoying doing more stuff in emacs. It’s a meme, but it’s true.
    - lysace 1y ago
      I spent 25 years using emacs before vscode (1997 to 2022-ish). I didn't go deep, I mostly just enjoyed the core parts of emacs + ccmode. I don't enjoy LISP but I still enjoy emacs, if that makes any sense. MS made some very real and very usable innovations. Emacs hackers/maintainers would be wise to copy them, like I'm sure Microsoft copied things from emacs. It's a bit like the UI aspect of the browser wars. Everyone wins when good things are cloned and then iteratively improved upon.
      - datadrivenangel 1y ago
        What are the ways that VScode is better than Emacs?
        lysace 1y ago
        I listed my favorites above. Generalizing it: Having smart people who really understand UX helps a lot with minimizing those months of pain before the payoff.
        baq 1y ago
        vscode does three things extremely well: defaults, defaults and defaults. The most important ‘you just need M-x do-whatever after installing the whatever-doer package’ is supported out of the box (no details on purpose, try running emacs or vim without any config and compare to a clean fresh install of vscode).
        znpy 1y ago
        Re: defaults. Sometimes i wonder if it’s worth giving those new emacs distributions a shot. I’m thinking about spacemacs or doom emacs. They look cool but so far i’ve been okay with stock emacs.
        qubitcoder 1y ago
        I used Spacemacs for years and recommend it to others. It was fantastic in the early days, but the stability seems to have diminished. I encountered more bugs over time that I'd have to troubleshoot and fix myself. I switched to Doom Emacs a couple of years ago. It's well-maintained with regular updates, fantastic language support, and lightning fast. The CLI tooling is also nice (i.e., you can run 'doom upgrade' to update everything, or 'doom doctor' if you encounter an issue). It's the closest equivalent to VS Code in terms of working out of the box. Not to mention the advantages of Emacs with Vim keybindings. There is a learning curve, but the GitHub documentation is excellent. Adding support for Ruby on Rails development, for example, is as simple as uncommenting '(ruby +rails +lsp)' line in the '~/.config/init.el' file, and then running 'doom sync'. There's a long list of supported languages and tooling [0]. [0] https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs/blob/master/static/init.example.el https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs/blob/master/static/in...
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      I second all this. I'm using Zed today, but I was using Emacs for 20 years, then Sublime/VSCode/etc. for a few, and now Zed. If it disappears, I'm going right back to Emacs without a moment's hesitation. And "Mastering Emacs" is brilliant.
    - rurban 1y ago
      And with copilot.el you get access to all models, not just some. I'm using Claude
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      I dedicated my time between 1995 and 2005 as my main UNIX editor, and don't miss installing Emacs.
      - kstrauser 1y ago
        It’s gotten way more ergonomic, BTW. Even if you treat it as a toolkit to build your own editor, the building blocks are much nicer than they were back then.
        pjmlp 1y ago
        Thing is, I don't want to build my editor, I want to live the dream of Xerox PARC workstations, and that is what IDEs are for. I had to make Emacs my go to editor in UNIX, because in those days there were hardly any alternatives, IDEs only started to be taken seriously on UNIX around 2000. Even James Gosling, one of influencial people in the Emacs history says its time is now passed and he rather use Netbeans, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5Q39MuTvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5Q39MuTvk
        DonHopkins 1y ago
        Speaking of old obsolete versions of Gosling Emacs, Lars Brinkhoff just posted this source code for UniPress Emacs 2.20 he got from from Hans Hübner! That's the version we called NeMACS, with support for NeWS (Gosling's PostScript based window system), tabbed windows and pie menus, etc: https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources/Hans%20H%C3%BCbner https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources/... So the answer to DVRC's ("Adopter of orphaned technologies") question on June 3, 2023, is yes, finally! HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring with UniPress Emacs on NeWS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36166642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36166642 DonHopkins on June 2, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs UniPress Emacs for NeWS in 1988: Scriptable GUI, tabbed windows, pie menus, hypermedia authoring tool for HyperTIES browser. Emacs served as an IDE with tabbed window and pie menus, for interactively editing, viewing, and navigating HyperTIES markup language documents, graphics, and interactive PostScript "applets". HyperTIES browser and Gosling Emacs authoring tool with pie menus on the NeWS window system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)#/media/File:HyperTIESAuthoring.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)#/media/File:Hy... >HyperTIES is an early hypermedia browser developed under the direction of Dr. Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. This screen snapshot shows the HyperTIES authoring tool (built with UniPress's Gosling Emacs text editor, written in MockLisp) and browser (built with the NeWS window system, written in PostScript, C and Forth). The tabbed windows and pie menu reusable components were developed by Don Hopkins, who also developed the NeWS Emacs (NeMACS) and HyperTIES user interfaces. (Sorry about the quality -- this is a scan of an old screen dump printed by a laser printer.) Emacs provides the pie menus you see popped up in the illustration (Articulate, Edit, New (Storyboard, Link, Picture, Target), Define) that control the HyperTIES browser from the custom text editing mode of HyperTIES storyboards (like web pages), which the HyperTIES browser (in the background, which emacs controls in a sub-process) formats and displays. HyperTIES also uses pie menus for navigation and in interactive "applets" programmed in PostScript. DVRC on June 3, 2023 [–] Do any version of UniPress Emacs (that support the NeWS driver) or NeMacs survive? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31989423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31989423 I wrote the following description of how NeWS relates to modern web browsers and "AJAX" in the NeWS article on Wikipedia, and I also worked on TNT (The NeWS Toolkit) at Sun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS >NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS coherently: >- used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming. >- used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML and CSS for rendering. >- used PostScript data instead of XML and JSON for data representation. [...] HyperTIES Emacs Authoring Tool MockLisp code (Yet Another HyperTIES Implementation, This Time In Emacs): http://donhopkins.com/home/ties/yahtittie.ml http://donhopkins.com/home/ties/yahtittie.ml https://donhopkins.com/home/ties/ https://donhopkins.com/home/ties/ HyperTIES Discussions from Hacker News: https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperties-discussions-from-hacker-news-937d156f0330 https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperties-discussions-from-hac...
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    > All I need is a Github Copilot clone I'm using https://github.com/copilot-emacs/copilot.el https://github.com/copilot-emacs/copilot.el > good code search feature. project-find-regexp is a nice start. > Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when switching between git branches. (global-auto-revert-mode t) > Oh and the ssh remote extension. I haven't compared it to Tramp.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    > All I need is a Github Copilot clone or you could just use copilot through copilot.el > and a good code search feature. Like through helm or ivy? > Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when switching between git branches. My emacs does that, and I don't think I did anything special to get it. > Oh and the ssh remote extension. like tramp?
  - dharmab 1y ago
    You're almost describing Zed to a T.
    - lysace 1y ago
      Just played with it. You're right. Thanks!
  - baq 1y ago
    vscode find in files is literally ripgrep FYI.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Many of us are perfectly fine with commercial software, we have been into the other side and got tired of the religion.
    - mschild 1y ago
      I think a lot of people don't have a problem with commercial software, but rather with the disingenuous behavior that some companies display. VSCode was/is often touted as open source and Microsoft are using it to present themselves as community loving until MS sees an opportunity to extract some money/hinder the competition. In comparison, Jetbrains is transparent with their offerings and what you get. There is in my opinion a clear difference in how they operate and how they are perceived.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        You mean transparent like the way they added AI to their products?
        mschild 1y ago
        I'm unaware of how they added it. Was there controversy around it?
        pjmlp 1y ago
        Yes, initially it was a pain to disable, a big no-no for many customers. https://devclass.com/2024/03/11/jetbrains-bows-to-user-pressure-and-unbundles-ai-assistant-in-new-intellij-idea-beta/ https://devclass.com/2024/03/11/jetbrains-bows-to-user-press...
        mschild 1y ago
        Thanks for linking it. Obviously not a great approach. I'd still look at Jetbrains more favorably than most other tech companies. Clearly not perfect by any means. To be fair to them, they seemed to listen to the feedback and provided it as a separate plugin.
  - globular-toast 1y ago
    Warning, though: the older you get, the harder it will be to learn emacs. The best time to learn it is yesterday. The second best is today.
- rs186 1y ago
  So how do you get intellisense and debug C++ in Zed?
  - LoganDark 1y ago
    Zed uses open-source language servers. It just doesn't rely on proprietary extensions. I actually worked a bunch on the language server logic in Zed trying to get a bunch of it to work on Windows. All I have to say about that is: ugh.
  - yoyohello13 1y ago
    clangd is an LSP. You can use it in any editor with LSP support https://clangd.llvm.org/ https://clangd.llvm.org/
    - hu3 1y ago
      Why isn't Cursor using this by default then?
      - dharmab 1y ago
        I don't think MSVC provides an LSP, so the VSC C++ extension uses proprietary Intellisense features instead. LLVM provides their own extension to use the clangd LSP: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=llvm-vs-code-extensions.vscode-clangd https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=llvm-vs-... In short: Corporate politics and the Cursor team taking the path of least resistance.
  - dharmab 1y ago
    There's a great doc on exactly how Zed handles syntax and intellisense-style completions: https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-languages https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-languages Debugging isn't in yet, but is actively being worked on and planned for public release before 1.0: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5065 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5065, there's an active channel in their Discord discussing the development of the feature.
- hobs 1y ago
  Reminds when I excited to see Azure Data Studio adding Postgres support, but it was actually a binary extension with no ability to fix or change anything and no way for other useful databases to extend and use the functionality; they had spent all the time and effort to make sure nobody could do something like it but them. Weird, ADS is dead and nobody spent any time on it, I wonder why.
- notnmeyer 1y ago
  zed is veerrrry good. i really appreciate the clean ui compared to vscode and its ilk. don’t love the pricing they just announced though. i don’t mind paying for my tools, but it not being unlimited scares me off slightly.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    Agreed, but at least that's an optional feature you can choose to pay for if you want to. And if that changes, I'll drop it and head back to a Free editor.
  - dharmab 1y ago
    I think it's totally fair for them to charge for an optional feature that requires a cloud service. And if you don't like their pricing you can use a different provider, including self-hosted ones.
    - notnmeyer 1y ago
      absolutely agree
  - 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
    Just installed it, but it put a terrible taste in my mouth where the IDE has a hamburger menu instead of showing the file menu. This is meant to be a professional, technical application used on a desktop. Glad some designer made 150 pixels look clean instead of busy, but now I am reduced to an extra click any time I need to do something. Minor grievance, sure, but it it not an encouraging sign for their priorities.
- eviks 1y ago
  Does Zed have a comparable C++ extension?
  - dharmab 1y ago
    Zed uses tree-sitter and LSP; most popular languages do not require extensions, and extensions for niche languages are shockingly easy to write. Literally 100-300 lines of Rust boilerplate and around 300 lines of config boilerplate, with minimal maintenance/upkeep. https://zed.dev/docs/languages/cpp https://zed.dev/docs/languages/cpp
    - wolvesechoes 1y ago
      Many words to state that it doesn't.
      - dharmab 1y ago
        Many words to explain that it doesn't need one, as you can see by clicking that link.
      - mort96 1y ago
        No idea why they worded it the way they did. But the answer is: yes, Zed has something comparable, using clangd as a C and C++ LSP server.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  I’ve just installed Zed based on your recommendation and I’m already impressed. It’s fast, the interface is distraction free and it already has support for all the languages I use regularly. Even Terraform support, which is notoriously hard to get right, is better than the current “best” in VSCode. Thanks for the recommendation
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    Glad you like it! It’s a proper native app (no Electron) and super responsive. I truly enjoy using it. And yes, the language support (via Treesitter and LSPs) is fantastic.
- int_19h 1y ago
  I actually worked on VSCode (Python support specifically) at Microsoft in the past, and seeing this kind of thing frustrates me to no end. The worst part is all the VSCode is still promoted to developers as open source, even though official extensions increasingly aren't, with bits and pieces gradually replaced with closed code. It's not that closed source is necessarily bad, but when F/OSS popularity is milked for marketing purposes while stuff like this happens, it just feels very wrong. If you want to be closed source for reasons, fine, but be honest and upfront about it.
  - VyseofArcadia 1y ago
    There's a special place in hell for orgs that do this. Google has been doing the same thing with Android. IIRC Apple at least has always been fairly clear and consistent with what bits of its software are open and what bits aren't. To my knowledge they haven't been breaking off chunks of Darwin and closing them. (Although if I'm wrong do correct me.)
- exceptione 1y ago
  Even better: Theia. It supports most vscode extensions right out of the box. https://theia-ide.org/ https://theia-ide.org/
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - 0rzech 1y ago
    Supports without auto updating them and along with other annoyances: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43793016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43793016 . VSCodium [1] has much better UX than Theia IDE, IMHO. [1] https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/
    - bobajeff 1y ago
      Yeah I've just tried Theia. Vscodium is still the way to go. I just wish they had answers for issues like running extensions that depend on cpptools. I managed to work around it by installing an old version of cpptools from before the nag prompt that checks you're running it in vscode was added. Zed is almost a good solution but like most they are missing most of vscodes markdown editing features*. Also, right now there's no way to hide the sign in and ai buttons from the UI. * https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/markdown https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/markdown
- sureglymop 1y ago
  Zed is nice but I still prefer vs codes configuration scheme. Was working on a web/frontend project a while ago and had honestly a very hard time to set up Zed to do everything from formatting to linting and syntax highlighting correctly. Meanwhile in vscode I had to install 3 extensions, enable them for the workspace and they were already aware of each other and seamlessly worked together. I also think it's a mixed opportunity not to allow for something like Lua or a Lisp to configure Zed in. It's very promising but I'm not willing to switch just yet.
- bitbasher 1y ago
  So, you hopped from one walled garden to another? I don't mean that in a mean way, but have you considered another editor that is more open?
- sitkack 1y ago
  Zed is a for profit company, aren't they just going to go down the same route?
bangaladore 1y ago
To be clear, I'm don't like the Microsoft has a proprietary Marketplace, but a company openly violating the terms of use for their own profit is a bit much in my opinion. > Cursor allegedly has been flouting Microsoft terms-of-service rules for some time now by setting up a reverse proxy to mask its network requests to the endpoints used by the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace. This allows Cursor users to install VS Code extensions from Microsoft's market. Other VS Code forks tend to point to Open VSX, an alternative extension marketplace.
- madeofpalk 1y ago
  Yeah, I've noticed this using cursor. I was surprised that the extension marketplace seemed... identical to VS Code.
  - benoau 1y ago
    But why should we care? It's obvious Cursor's IDE is VSCode, I cannot think of a single reason why I should be against executing whatever the hell I want on my computer. It's not Cursor doing this, it's me doing this using Cursor.
    - fsloth 1y ago
      That’s not how companies see it. From MS point of view it’s Cursor doing it to them. The way copyright and other rights to your IP you claim to have work in practice, is you need to enforce those claims or loose the rights.
      - benoau 1y ago
        Another way copyright has worked for decades is qBittorrent for instance, is not responsible for infringements by users. Along with massive carve-outs for Microsoft and the gang to avoid that responsibility too, on GitHub and YouTube and many other websites.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
yoyohello13 1y ago
Look, if you willingly have any piece of your stack relying on Microsoft you have to be ready for the rug pull. They WILL fuck you, it's guaranteed.
- znpy 1y ago
  Anything that’s not gpl-licensed is going to pull the rug from under your feet, people should have learned this by now. Also, if you do open source contributions, never ever agree to assign copyright to the project: doing so means the project owners can relicense the code base, even towards proprietary license.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    Absolutely. I signed one copyright assignment, ever, with the FSF. I trust them enough to do that, but they're just about the only ones.
    - eikenberry 1y ago
      They don't require it anymore.
      - kstrauser 1y ago
        Better yet.
  - tuveson 1y ago
    FreeBSD must be pulling a very long con, then.
    - znpy 1y ago
      Uh, yes? Half of the initial mac os x kernel was ripped off freebsd, giving pretty much nothing back. Afaik netapp is also basing their system on bsd. Sony uses freebsd as the OS for their playstation. And many more, giving essentially nothing back.
rs186 1y ago
The intellisense from clangd is much better and faster than the Microsoft C++ extension, if you can set up a compile_commands.json. Although debugging still relies on the Microsoft extension. Although I don't think it's going to be hard to create an extension just for debugging (if it does not already exist?)
- Rucadi 1y ago
  Lldb and rr (midas) have vscode extensions
- geertj 1y ago
  Yes, even on medium sized code bases (few 100K lines), the Microsoft C++ extension gets extremely slow. Clangd is a much better option.
- senderista 1y ago
  Not just faster, I have never been able to get jump to declaration/definition/references to work reliably without clangd.
- nomad41 1y ago
  I've had the opposite experience with weird C++ projects from some customers that use external toolchains. For some reason even creating the compile_commands.json file with Bear doesn't work, while the proprietary Intellisense extension works out of the box without any configuration.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  I agree. It's way better. You can use the CodeLLDB extension for debugging. https://github.com/vadimcn/codelldb https://github.com/vadimcn/codelldb
- Melonai 1y ago
  There are other third-party extensions which rely on the Microsoft C++ one. I have recently ran into this problem with my VSCodium setup.
- starkrights 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jonstewart 1y ago
The hilarious part is that old fart C++ programmers (like me) have been the ones most leery of VS Code. Microsoft’s gonna Microsoft, ‘specially with compilers.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  "Don't be paranoid", they said. "That's ancient history", they said. "Lucy will hold the football this time for sure", they said.
- bryancoxwell 1y ago
  What do you prefer to VSCode? Just started a job where I’ll be working in C++ and looking for alternatives
  - jonstewart 1y ago
    Well, VisualStudio for one. If you’re targeting Windows, you should consider it. VS Code feels slow to me in a way VS doesn’t. I spent most of the past ~fifteen years working in Sublime and just switched between that and the terminal for build and test—not fancy, but then, C++ coding isn’t a speedrun. Sublime is clean, fast, and portable. However, dev tooling has advanced so much now that I started learning and using neovim last year so I could take advantage of good syntax highlighting, LSP, and CoPilot. I don’t get enough daily reps to be good at core vi yet (I am a team manager so most of my time is spent asking questions of devs prefixed with “This is a really dumb question, but”) but despite all the techbros who’ve flocked to it I think neovim is pretty good technology and responsive. You can get the tooling features but control UI/UX; for me, I want as much code on the screen as possible, and I especially resent widgets that eat into vertical space. I started with one of the off-the-shelf all-in-one init.lua configs off github, but it was too complicated and I quickly broke things. What’s worked better is going through a video series on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHTeCSVAFNY&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHTeCSVAFNY&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN...) and building up the init.lua I want from scratch. As noted, I’m not great with it, especially the normal vim motions, but I’ve learned to get around, it’s fast, I can see my code without a million distracting widgets, and I get the benefit of clangd and CoPilot.
concerndc1tizen 1y ago
Do you guys ever feel tired of 'sounding the alarm'? I feel like I've been doing that for years on a wide range of topics, but every time it's like you're talking to cult members. How do you break through to people? People say things like "you're overthinking it", "that's never going to happen", "I don't care because I like using VSCode and not alternatives". Is it individualism? That they only consider their own narrow short-term interests, and have become blind to collective problems?
- Guthur 1y ago
  I think ultimately we're mostly just not as clever as we think we are, which I think unfortunately we must accept. Where this has become increasingly problematic is rampant materialism and corporatism. If the only real motivator in town, especially for the powerful, is material gain then there is nothing to constrain wanton greed. This becomes even more pronounced with corporations because their overtly stated purpose is not but greed, so even if the individual actors have some transcend moral compass they will be in conflict to their programmed imperative to "do their job". Currently many of the powerful are materialistic and materialism can bring worldly power. Other political paradigms may come to the fore but as it takes a form and gravity it will likely come into some dialectic conflict with the prevailing materialistic status quo. That may be a peaceful resolution, but I'd not be certain of that.
- anon7000 1y ago
  It's tradeoffs all the way down. VSCode remains one of the best intro editors, because it's free, has next to zero learning curve, and a robust extension ecosystem. I mean, what even is the argument here? That it's not completely open in every possible way? Do we feel so strongly about the heaps of paid IDEs that are completely closed source?
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    > Do we feel so strongly about the heaps of paid IDEs that are completely closed source? Me, personally? No, because they're honest about it. I use BBEdit and Nova frequently on my Mac. Those are as closed source as it gets. They never pretend otherwise, though. You pay your money and you know what you're getting. VSCode tries really hard to appear to be open source, as long as you're willing to ignore the million places where they aren't. (Python devs: are you using PyLance? I'm talking to you.) And ironically, those closed editors seem to play more nicely with the ecosystem as a whole. Neither BBEdit nor Nova have ever tried to talk me into installing closed plugins, and the same plugins that work with them work great in Emacs and Zed. If I go to one bar that charged $5 per beer, and another that gives free beer but makes you rent single-use mugs for $5, even though the end price is identical, the rental bar's going to annoy me horrendously. Just admit what it is and let people judge on their own merits.
hexo 1y ago
Good. Now it's time to learn from this important lesson.
silverwind 1y ago
Glad I'm using Sublime Text.
electroly 1y ago
I love Cursor deeply but choosing to be a VSCode fork instead of a VSCode extension was a fatal choice. In the long term I think they either have to retool as an extension or they will go out of business. You can only publicly flout Microsoft's licenses for so long while making a competitor to one of their AAA products.
- anon7000 1y ago
  Eh, I mean it's a fork. They can keep updating their fork forever. Reality is they want complete control over the product, and VS Code doesn't expose everything in the extension API.
  - electroly 1y ago
    Sure, but they depend on a bunch of Microsoft proprietary extensions (that they can't fork) that ban usage in VSCode forks, and they knew this when they made the choice. This was an inevitable outcome from Microsoft's side. I'm sure they want to remain in business more than they want complete control over the product.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      > they depend on a bunch of Microsoft proprietary extensions Microsoft still holds the crown when it comes to C# debugging, but for most proprietary MS extensions there are free, open source alternatives. They may not be as polished as the ones Microsoft actually pays people to maintain, but I don't see why Cursor would actually depend on any of the proprietary ones if you're not using it for C# dev (and even there competitors like Jetbrains have figured out a way to make it work).
      - metta2uall 1y ago
        And hopefully Cursor can give some funding to the FOSS alternatives
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
AlienRobot 1y ago
I don't understand the problem. It sounds like the C/C++ extension was proprietary. This sort of thing can always happen when you rely on proprietary software. Make an open source C/C++ extension and you wouldn't have this problem.
- zzo38computer 1y ago
  Yes, that is what I thought, too. (It would be a good idea to have a open source C/C++ extension anyways, whether or not the proprietary extension stops working with non-Microsoft code.) (Maybe there is such extension; I don't know; I don't use VS Code and VS Codium etc.)
  - MelodyUwU 1y ago
    clangd, that is the extension. a lot better than the prioprietary trash microsoft pulls onto the store. open source, too.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  >It sounds like the C/C++ extension was proprietary The extension itself it MIT licensed (so could be hosted on the open VSIX store, if it wasn't down because the Eclipse project is suffering from server issues right now). In theory any fork can patch out the check and re-release the extension. However, the extension packages some binaries that are proprietary, and have been since about four years ago. People could re-implement those and re-release an open version of the extension, but you can't just (legally) take the proprietary binaries and ship them if you don't have the license. Open alternatives actually exist, but their quality and ease of configuration depends on your use case. In large projects the proprietary extension seems to be worse from what I've read.
paxys 1y ago
Shitty move (as expected from Microsoft) but I don't see the bigger issue. The beauty of open source is that you can always roll back to a version that did work. Of course continued developement and support from there on is your problem, but Microsoft never owed that to you anyways. Cursor, Codium and all the other VS Code forks have unlimited VC funding and are worth tens of billions of dollars combined. They can afford to contribute back to the ecosystem.
- ndiddy 1y ago
  The C/C++ extension isn't open source though, and that's where the "doesn't work on forks" DRM is implemented. At least the clangd extension is open source and is a viable alternative.
  - paxys 1y ago
    Well if it isn't open source then they should never have been using it in the first place.
  - ForOldHack 1y ago
    But what happens when you anger the wizards? Some guy gets 4 two liter bottles of Mt Dew, and in a weekend comes up with a better plugin, and open sources it. Look it up on Monday. I just went from VSCode 1.52 to 1.99, and it's not pretty, but... Can someone convince copilot to rat out it's owners and write out a extension that runs cLisp? And all the emacs code runs in VSCode? ( I am saying this so facietously... ).
kentonv 1y ago
The clangd extension is better anyway, and is open source. The Microsoft C++ extension is not open source; not sure what people were expecting here.
- int_19h 1y ago
  It's one thing for it to not be open source. It's another thing for its license to explicitly prohibit its use with any other IDE, even if it's API-compatible, even if it's literally exactly VSCode recompiled with another name. And it's yet another thing to proactively insert checks for that.
  - surajrmal 1y ago
    Why? If I listed an app on the google play store but intentionally limited it from working when installed by alternative means (eg someone relisting it on an alternative app store without my permission) would that be problematic? Why is this different?
    - flufluflufluffy 1y ago
      People want to be given everything for free, to be able to put the absolute least amount of effort into the code they write, in the name of “open source.”
      - int_19h 1y ago
        I would be fine with it if Microsoft didn't constantly prattle about how VSCode is "open source" all the time without mentioning all those gotchas.
      - gradientsrneat 1y ago
        True! Open source = free stuff for a lot of people. This is why corporations like Microsoft encourage open source - so they can profit off of other programmer's hard work, without giving anything in return in most cases, and in rare cases giving a small donation. So, it goes both ways. But open source nevertheless contributes to the commons when done well. Compare and contrast: Free software.
elashri 1y ago
At least I know one alternative that is on bar (even better according to some people) for the C++ MS extension. What I am worried more about is the Jupyter Notebook MS extensions. I cannot find a suitable alternative and sometimes I am not being able to use it on windsurf/VSCodium (manually installing vsix). I am surprised by that taking into consideration how Jupyter notebooks relevance in data science and ML.
eikenberry 1y ago
> Visual Studio Code (VS Code) no longer works with derivative products such as VS Codium [..] They seem to have this backward. Visual Studio Code is a derivative product of VS Codium.
- voxic11 1y ago
  No VS Codium is just a alternative build of Visual Studio Code. > This is a repository of scripts to automatically build Microsoft's vscode repository into freely-licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration. https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium
  - eikenberry 1y ago
    I thought it was similar to the Chromium/Chrome situation. The naming implied that. But I don't use it and don't follow it that closely. Thanks for the clarification.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
Mystery-Machine 1y ago
How is it not open-source? It's licensed under MIT + VS Marketplace Terms: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools?tab=License-1-ov-file#readme https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools?tab=License-1-o... If you fork it and don't use VS Marketplace, it's only MIT. Or am I missing something?
- zb3 1y ago
  I guess it's the "additional binaries" which are not included.. but that's a guess, we need someone to confirm.
- merb 1y ago
  You missed that the ‚binary‘ vsix file has a different license: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/ms-vscode.cpptools/license https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/ms-vscode.cpptool... (The license like that existed before cursor, it was basically the reason for vscodium) (Source is https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.cpptools https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscod... the license link at the bottom) The same problem with the c# extension, which has had an even bigger shitstorm since some parts of the extension need a ms account and depending on the company needs to be paid
  - int_19h 1y ago
    Also Python.
zb3 1y ago
People on this site will never ever learn that if a company (especially a profitable one) invests into something and then gives it away for free, there must be some kind of strings attached.
DeepYogurt 1y ago
lol
shmerl 1y ago
FYI, neovim has LSP and DAP support, as well as a bunch of other editors.
- Spivak 1y ago
  neovim is a truly beautiful piece of software that is impossible to undersell. It has made vim into a full feature complete IDE for every language finally with a good editor :P
  - shmerl 1y ago
    100%. I switched to it to get true color themes support in the terminal which vim didn't have at the time, but I stayed with it because of all the extensibility for features like above.
- tcoff91 1y ago
  Neovim is a godsend, I would be in despair without it.
  - shmerl 1y ago
    I learned a bunch of Lua because of it :)
    - EasyMark 1y ago
      I've been thinking of that but nvim + lazyvim is so nice and easy as a text editor. I just need to figure out how to keep the shell plugin from thinking it's smarter than me and linting every single time
      - shmerl 1y ago
        Knowing Lua helps making your neovim config too. I prefer it to vimscript.
kazinator 1y ago
This is just Microsoft being classic Microsoft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code
pjmlp 1y ago
People not using VSCode on purpose, based on forks, are surprised product owner isn't happy with their license violations. It is like when the same folks act surprised, after Google does something to their Chrome and Android forks. Don't want big tech sponsored products? Pay open source developers, so that they can actually make a living of their work.
dismalaf 1y ago
Why anyone uses anything from Microsoft is beyond me... It's always been clear that VSCode is a trojan horse for MS' EEE strategy. So just don't use MS stuff. Neovim is great, it has great C++ tools. What's the saying? Fool me once...
extr 1y ago
I use cursor primarily because of the great tab autocomplete model, but I've always thought it was a bit scummy they blatantly violate the VS Code licensing. Windsurf ships a special version of the pyright extension for this reason. Why doesn't cursor have to play by the rules too?
chilldsgn 1y ago
This is one of the reasons why I switched to CLion for C++ work, and the fact that VS Code and its derivatives was a pain to configure for C++. I also use PHPStorm for web dev work and we use MS DevOps at work and that extension is unstable, causes IDE errors for me and I will not use MS products just for this one irksome bug. I prefer PHPStorm for my work, because working with PHP in VS Code has never been a great experience for me. I just want my tools to work, I fight with code, I don't want to fight with my tools as well.
- charrondev 1y ago
  I can also second the usage PHPStorm over VSCode for PHP work. On a team of 10 PHP devs we have just one that prefers VSCode.
- LinAGKar 1y ago
  I did give CLion a try when looking for an editor, but last I checked CLion required you to use CMake. Also, JetBrains has it all split up between different IDEs. I need on e that supports C, C++, Python, Cython, Makefile, TypeScript, SCSS, XHTML, Shellscript, JSON and XML in the same program. I also need a program that can do CMake and C, and a program that can do C# (including project management, building, tests etc), Batch script, PowerShell, Shellscript, Cake and YAML, preferably with the same UI. And it needs to work on Linux. VSCode is the only one I've found that can handle that.
  - chilldsgn 1y ago
    That makes perfect sense. I used VS Code extensively for many years, and it kept on frustrating me over and over. I still use it on the odd occasion to edit a small script, but for larger projects, I prefer a dedicated IDE.
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  > This is one of the reasons why I switched to CLion for C++ work So jetbrains allows everyone to use their marketplace and their plugins outside their ides? I can download the jetbrains php extension add it to my own shell and not pay for it?
alfiedotwtf 1y ago
Imagine Debian banning Debian forks downloading from their repos… If Microsoft are going to call VS Code “open source”, then the marketplace should not be selective on clients. If so, it’s not Open Source, it’s Sparkling Virtue Signalling!
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  I don't see why they'd need to make the marketplace fully open for their client to be open source. Fedora packages a Flatpak client that downloads proprietary software, but that doesn't make Fedora Sparkling Virtue Signalling. Hell, Debian's repository now also include proprietary code (https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003 https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003) so binary BLOBs are perfectly capable of doing distro checks and refusing to run on forks.
Ekaros 1y ago
Is this big deal? Surely with help of AI tools you can implement these extensions in matter of days if not hours. And they will be better.
arjunaaqa 1y ago
Didn’t this affect Windsurf also ?
grougnax 1y ago
The Microsoft Intellisense is really bad compared to the open-source one clangd, anyway.
trenchgun 1y ago
Abandon VSCodium, Return to Emacs
chenzhekl 1y ago
I don't like MS, either. BUT, let's be clear. No one is to obligated to work for free on OSS, not even big companies like MS. They have the right to constraint them to work on their own platforms. If you don't like it, you should fork the previous unconstrained versions or develop your own C/C++ add-on rather than complaining that MS stopped supporting your favorite extension.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  If Microsoft is gonna keep trying to enshitty their apps with unmasked for AI pop-ups that will always come back and even go so far to throw ads in at an OS level: yes, I will feel at least a bit entitled to some "free work" for taking hours of my time. I sure do wish my industry didn't need windows. I'd happily go to Linux and never look back.
- mort96 1y ago
  "It's not illegal for them to do this bad thing" is such a common defense of companies doing bad things, as if it was the legality and not the ethics that was being discussed. I don't get it.
Yizahi 1y ago
Good to see some of these neural network people actually pay for their real infractions. Granted, this time it was a banal competitor action, but still nice. Just because a license isn't enforced, doesn't make it safe to violate.
auguzanellato 1y ago
After Pylance, Liveshare, and remote development (which among the others also includes dev containers support) I’m not really that surprised.
ryao 1y ago
Am I the only person using tmux+vim+cscope+bash+gcc as a development environment? I do not see the need for these GUIs. I also can develop software from just about anywhere as I only need to SSH into a machine with these things (+git) installed. There are no hostile license terms either. As an added bonus, this setup is excellent for pair programming. Just use voice chat via signal or anything else and have the other person connect to the same tmux session over SSH. That said, if you must use a GUI based development environment, I know of people happily using netbeans. I am not sure why anyone would use Microsoft’s tools for this.
- lillecarl 1y ago
  I use helix editor, but I wouldn't say my editor needs are that great, I don't "write software at scale". I mostly write infrastructure automation in , terraform, Nix, python and YAML pretty much. For more "developer" focused professions I bet using tools tailored for their needs suits them better, I recently wrote some C# for some Windows software in Visual Studio in a Windows VM and the ootb experience is pretty good. You're not the only one, but you're probably a small minority with your DE setup.
- kurtis_reed 1y ago
  > I am not sure why anyone would use Microsoft’s tools for this. Really?
  - EasyMark 1y ago
    While I use emacs these days for my embedded and "simple" web gui work, I quite miss visual studio, especially the debugger. I'm not sure why everyone acts like Microsoft tools are so bad. I dislike microsoft for their crappy corporate attitude but I quite liked their dev and debug tools, thought they did seem stuck in c89 for far far too long. I was doing c++ gui work along with signal processing backend and it was always a good experience.
- g19fanatic 1y ago
  My dev environment is very similar (no cscope but ctags yes)! tmux + vim + bash + gcc Vim is so powerful, most people only know how to edit 1 file at a time and how to exit vim... My typical dev environment has over 10k+ open buffers in 1 vim instance. you want to know what "just works" in this environment? vimgrep w/ ## to find anything across these open buffers AND built in Ctrl+P autocomplete... Get good with splits and tabs inside vim and you'll never be limited... it just works.
titaphraz 1y ago
This was foreseen 3 years ago: https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
Certified 1y ago
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Microsoft knew they would never get significant market share unless they offered open source alternatives that let you circumvent the telemetry in the early days of VScode. Embrace. The acquisition of github was part of this strategy. They made an ecosystem that sucked a lot of plugin developer talent into their ecosystem. Extend. Now the market share is firmly in their grasp and competitors have become weaker. Extinguish.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  This is it in a nutshell, with a lot of corps; IBM, Microsoft, etc. Be careful who you lie in bed with. Seemslike newer companies like Facebook and Google have a much much better track record. They may end a project but they don't suck you in and then say "nah, it's proprietary now"
  - GuB-42 1y ago
    Android slowly became that. AOSP used to be the complete Android system, more or less. And when you bought a Nexus device from Google, that's what you got. But they progressively abandoned the stock apps to replace them by their proprietary counterparts, or ones tied to their online services. Then, they replaced their Nexus line of phones with the Pixel line. Pixels are full of proprietary technology, and their last move was to make Android development private.
    - ndiddy 1y ago
      Here's a pretty good Linus Tech Tips video where he installs stock AOSP on a Pixel phone and goes over how it's virtually unusable. Just like you say, while the Pixel UI may be Google's vision for how the Android platform should work, they've moved to keeping their UI development private just like every other Android vendor. Meanwhile, stock AOSP has basically been left to rot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hlRB2izres https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hlRB2izres
      - hollerith 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
flufluflufluffy 1y ago
A company simply starts enforcing the terms of use that were being openly violated… what’s the issue here? The article claims it could stifle competition — HUh?! Cursor and others were relying on an extension created by Microsoft, now that they can’t do that, they will have to use an extension created by either themselves or another third party, increasing the use of that alternate extension. This will literally help competition. There was no competition beforehand, ppl just accepted the Microsoft extension with open arms. I really don’t know why everybody’s freaking out. You can always use a different editor, or make your own extension.
- VyseofArcadia 1y ago
  A summary: > Embrace Yay, MS loves open source! > Extend Wow, VS Code is so useful! > Extinguish shocked Pikachu meme
-__---____-ZXyw 1y ago
Protesilaos in this piece https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2019-08-11-why-emacs-switch/ https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2019-08-11-why-emacs-switch/ has the following closing paragraphs: "The gist is that you should be learning by doing. It takes patience and dedication. Study and reuse other people’s code, but do not blindly copy-paste things: patterns of behaviour you do not understand will quickly accumulate, resulting in a potentially fragmented, frustrating experience. The key is to not expect instant gratification. I know, this is how most of the world works these days. Thankfully, Emacs runs contrary to the zeitgeist: it caters to the user who cares deeply about the quality and functionality of their tools." From my reading of the computer history books, it seems like there was a time when this sort of dedication to taking things slow and investing time into your tools and moving steadily towards mastery of all aspects of your craft were seen as de rigueur, part of the game. Moments like this, you want to imagine that some people will turn back to that. I guess when the next big thing comes along with the hype and marketing and "ease-of-use", we'll be off on the same cycle again, though.
miohtama 1y ago
Good news is that with Cursor AI, they can rewrite their own extension from the scratch in two hours! (:
deafpolygon 1y ago
This is why it would be better for more effort and time spent in developing open source software such as neovim. Then we can always be sure tooling is free.

243 points by Dotnaught 1y ago

3np 1y ago

Reminder: https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

And this is why I'm using Zed today. I'm deadly serious. I was a huge proponent of VSCode at first but I've soured on it, and now I don't want my workflow to depend on it in any way. Awesome software, but I don't trust the upstream org further than I must.

lysace 1y ago
Still using VSCode, but you kind of know that's it's going to go sour eventually. It is Microsoft. :/ I figure e.g. emacs will always be there when that happens. All I need is a Github Copilot clone and a good code search feature. Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when switching between git branches. Oh and the ssh remote extension.
- znpy 1y ago
  Emacs user here, have used vscode in the past. Yep, vscode is more intuitive. However emacs is mostly the kind of thing you dedicate a couple of months of discomfort and enjoy for the rest of your life. Quite literally. Spending some money on the “mastering emacs” book (https://www.masteringemacs.org/ https://www.masteringemacs.org/) is worth imho. Bonus point: little by little you start enjoying doing more stuff in emacs. It’s a meme, but it’s true.
  - lysace 1y ago
    I spent 25 years using emacs before vscode (1997 to 2022-ish). I didn't go deep, I mostly just enjoyed the core parts of emacs + ccmode. I don't enjoy LISP but I still enjoy emacs, if that makes any sense. MS made some very real and very usable innovations. Emacs hackers/maintainers would be wise to copy them, like I'm sure Microsoft copied things from emacs. It's a bit like the UI aspect of the browser wars. Everyone wins when good things are cloned and then iteratively improved upon.
    - datadrivenangel 1y ago
      What are the ways that VScode is better than Emacs?
      - lysace 1y ago
        I listed my favorites above. Generalizing it: Having smart people who really understand UX helps a lot with minimizing those months of pain before the payoff.
      - baq 1y ago
        vscode does three things extremely well: defaults, defaults and defaults. The most important ‘you just need M-x do-whatever after installing the whatever-doer package’ is supported out of the box (no details on purpose, try running emacs or vim without any config and compare to a clean fresh install of vscode).
        znpy 1y ago
        Re: defaults. Sometimes i wonder if it’s worth giving those new emacs distributions a shot. I’m thinking about spacemacs or doom emacs. They look cool but so far i’ve been okay with stock emacs.
        qubitcoder 1y ago
        I used Spacemacs for years and recommend it to others. It was fantastic in the early days, but the stability seems to have diminished. I encountered more bugs over time that I'd have to troubleshoot and fix myself. I switched to Doom Emacs a couple of years ago. It's well-maintained with regular updates, fantastic language support, and lightning fast. The CLI tooling is also nice (i.e., you can run 'doom upgrade' to update everything, or 'doom doctor' if you encounter an issue). It's the closest equivalent to VS Code in terms of working out of the box. Not to mention the advantages of Emacs with Vim keybindings. There is a learning curve, but the GitHub documentation is excellent. Adding support for Ruby on Rails development, for example, is as simple as uncommenting '(ruby +rails +lsp)' line in the '~/.config/init.el' file, and then running 'doom sync'. There's a long list of supported languages and tooling [0]. [0] https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs/blob/master/static/init.example.el https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs/blob/master/static/in...
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    I second all this. I'm using Zed today, but I was using Emacs for 20 years, then Sublime/VSCode/etc. for a few, and now Zed. If it disappears, I'm going right back to Emacs without a moment's hesitation. And "Mastering Emacs" is brilliant.
  - rurban 1y ago
    And with copilot.el you get access to all models, not just some. I'm using Claude
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    I dedicated my time between 1995 and 2005 as my main UNIX editor, and don't miss installing Emacs.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      It’s gotten way more ergonomic, BTW. Even if you treat it as a toolkit to build your own editor, the building blocks are much nicer than they were back then.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        Thing is, I don't want to build my editor, I want to live the dream of Xerox PARC workstations, and that is what IDEs are for. I had to make Emacs my go to editor in UNIX, because in those days there were hardly any alternatives, IDEs only started to be taken seriously on UNIX around 2000. Even James Gosling, one of influencial people in the Emacs history says its time is now passed and he rather use Netbeans, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5Q39MuTvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5Q39MuTvk
        DonHopkins 1y ago
        Speaking of old obsolete versions of Gosling Emacs, Lars Brinkhoff just posted this source code for UniPress Emacs 2.20 he got from from Hans Hübner! That's the version we called NeMACS, with support for NeWS (Gosling's PostScript based window system), tabbed windows and pie menus, etc: https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources/Hans%20H%C3%BCbner https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources/... So the answer to DVRC's ("Adopter of orphaned technologies") question on June 3, 2023, is yes, finally! HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring with UniPress Emacs on NeWS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36166642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36166642 DonHopkins on June 2, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs UniPress Emacs for NeWS in 1988: Scriptable GUI, tabbed windows, pie menus, hypermedia authoring tool for HyperTIES browser. Emacs served as an IDE with tabbed window and pie menus, for interactively editing, viewing, and navigating HyperTIES markup language documents, graphics, and interactive PostScript "applets". HyperTIES browser and Gosling Emacs authoring tool with pie menus on the NeWS window system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)#/media/File:HyperTIESAuthoring.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)#/media/File:Hy... >HyperTIES is an early hypermedia browser developed under the direction of Dr. Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. This screen snapshot shows the HyperTIES authoring tool (built with UniPress's Gosling Emacs text editor, written in MockLisp) and browser (built with the NeWS window system, written in PostScript, C and Forth). The tabbed windows and pie menu reusable components were developed by Don Hopkins, who also developed the NeWS Emacs (NeMACS) and HyperTIES user interfaces. (Sorry about the quality -- this is a scan of an old screen dump printed by a laser printer.) Emacs provides the pie menus you see popped up in the illustration (Articulate, Edit, New (Storyboard, Link, Picture, Target), Define) that control the HyperTIES browser from the custom text editing mode of HyperTIES storyboards (like web pages), which the HyperTIES browser (in the background, which emacs controls in a sub-process) formats and displays. HyperTIES also uses pie menus for navigation and in interactive "applets" programmed in PostScript. DVRC on June 3, 2023 [–] Do any version of UniPress Emacs (that support the NeWS driver) or NeMacs survive? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31989423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31989423 I wrote the following description of how NeWS relates to modern web browsers and "AJAX" in the NeWS article on Wikipedia, and I also worked on TNT (The NeWS Toolkit) at Sun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS >NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS coherently: >- used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming. >- used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML and CSS for rendering. >- used PostScript data instead of XML and JSON for data representation. [...] HyperTIES Emacs Authoring Tool MockLisp code (Yet Another HyperTIES Implementation, This Time In Emacs): http://donhopkins.com/home/ties/yahtittie.ml http://donhopkins.com/home/ties/yahtittie.ml https://donhopkins.com/home/ties/ https://donhopkins.com/home/ties/ HyperTIES Discussions from Hacker News: https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperties-discussions-from-hacker-news-937d156f0330 https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperties-discussions-from-hac...
- kstrauser 1y ago
  > All I need is a Github Copilot clone I'm using https://github.com/copilot-emacs/copilot.el https://github.com/copilot-emacs/copilot.el > good code search feature. project-find-regexp is a nice start. > Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when switching between git branches. (global-auto-revert-mode t) > Oh and the ssh remote extension. I haven't compared it to Tramp.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  > All I need is a Github Copilot clone or you could just use copilot through copilot.el > and a good code search feature. Like through helm or ivy? > Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when switching between git branches. My emacs does that, and I don't think I did anything special to get it. > Oh and the ssh remote extension. like tramp?
- dharmab 1y ago
  You're almost describing Zed to a T.
  - lysace 1y ago
    Just played with it. You're right. Thanks!
- baq 1y ago
  vscode find in files is literally ripgrep FYI.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Many of us are perfectly fine with commercial software, we have been into the other side and got tired of the religion.
  - mschild 1y ago
    I think a lot of people don't have a problem with commercial software, but rather with the disingenuous behavior that some companies display. VSCode was/is often touted as open source and Microsoft are using it to present themselves as community loving until MS sees an opportunity to extract some money/hinder the competition. In comparison, Jetbrains is transparent with their offerings and what you get. There is in my opinion a clear difference in how they operate and how they are perceived.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      You mean transparent like the way they added AI to their products?
      - mschild 1y ago
        I'm unaware of how they added it. Was there controversy around it?
        pjmlp 1y ago
        Yes, initially it was a pain to disable, a big no-no for many customers. https://devclass.com/2024/03/11/jetbrains-bows-to-user-pressure-and-unbundles-ai-assistant-in-new-intellij-idea-beta/ https://devclass.com/2024/03/11/jetbrains-bows-to-user-press...
        mschild 1y ago
        Thanks for linking it. Obviously not a great approach. I'd still look at Jetbrains more favorably than most other tech companies. Clearly not perfect by any means. To be fair to them, they seemed to listen to the feedback and provided it as a separate plugin.
- globular-toast 1y ago
  Warning, though: the older you get, the harder it will be to learn emacs. The best time to learn it is yesterday. The second best is today.
rs186 1y ago
So how do you get intellisense and debug C++ in Zed?
- LoganDark 1y ago
  Zed uses open-source language servers. It just doesn't rely on proprietary extensions. I actually worked a bunch on the language server logic in Zed trying to get a bunch of it to work on Windows. All I have to say about that is: ugh.
- yoyohello13 1y ago
  clangd is an LSP. You can use it in any editor with LSP support https://clangd.llvm.org/ https://clangd.llvm.org/
  - hu3 1y ago
    Why isn't Cursor using this by default then?
    - dharmab 1y ago
      I don't think MSVC provides an LSP, so the VSC C++ extension uses proprietary Intellisense features instead. LLVM provides their own extension to use the clangd LSP: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=llvm-vs-code-extensions.vscode-clangd https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=llvm-vs-... In short: Corporate politics and the Cursor team taking the path of least resistance.
- dharmab 1y ago
  There's a great doc on exactly how Zed handles syntax and intellisense-style completions: https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-languages https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-languages Debugging isn't in yet, but is actively being worked on and planned for public release before 1.0: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5065 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5065, there's an active channel in their Discord discussing the development of the feature.
hobs 1y ago
Reminds when I excited to see Azure Data Studio adding Postgres support, but it was actually a binary extension with no ability to fix or change anything and no way for other useful databases to extend and use the functionality; they had spent all the time and effort to make sure nobody could do something like it but them. Weird, ADS is dead and nobody spent any time on it, I wonder why.
notnmeyer 1y ago
zed is veerrrry good. i really appreciate the clean ui compared to vscode and its ilk. don’t love the pricing they just announced though. i don’t mind paying for my tools, but it not being unlimited scares me off slightly.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  Agreed, but at least that's an optional feature you can choose to pay for if you want to. And if that changes, I'll drop it and head back to a Free editor.
- dharmab 1y ago
  I think it's totally fair for them to charge for an optional feature that requires a cloud service. And if you don't like their pricing you can use a different provider, including self-hosted ones.
  - notnmeyer 1y ago
    absolutely agree
- 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
  Just installed it, but it put a terrible taste in my mouth where the IDE has a hamburger menu instead of showing the file menu. This is meant to be a professional, technical application used on a desktop. Glad some designer made 150 pixels look clean instead of busy, but now I am reduced to an extra click any time I need to do something. Minor grievance, sure, but it it not an encouraging sign for their priorities.
eviks 1y ago
Does Zed have a comparable C++ extension?
- dharmab 1y ago
  Zed uses tree-sitter and LSP; most popular languages do not require extensions, and extensions for niche languages are shockingly easy to write. Literally 100-300 lines of Rust boilerplate and around 300 lines of config boilerplate, with minimal maintenance/upkeep. https://zed.dev/docs/languages/cpp https://zed.dev/docs/languages/cpp
  - wolvesechoes 1y ago
    Many words to state that it doesn't.
    - dharmab 1y ago
      Many words to explain that it doesn't need one, as you can see by clicking that link.
    - mort96 1y ago
      No idea why they worded it the way they did. But the answer is: yes, Zed has something comparable, using clangd as a C and C++ LSP server.
hnlmorg 1y ago
I’ve just installed Zed based on your recommendation and I’m already impressed. It’s fast, the interface is distraction free and it already has support for all the languages I use regularly. Even Terraform support, which is notoriously hard to get right, is better than the current “best” in VSCode. Thanks for the recommendation
- kstrauser 1y ago
  Glad you like it! It’s a proper native app (no Electron) and super responsive. I truly enjoy using it. And yes, the language support (via Treesitter and LSPs) is fantastic.
int_19h 1y ago
I actually worked on VSCode (Python support specifically) at Microsoft in the past, and seeing this kind of thing frustrates me to no end. The worst part is all the VSCode is still promoted to developers as open source, even though official extensions increasingly aren't, with bits and pieces gradually replaced with closed code. It's not that closed source is necessarily bad, but when F/OSS popularity is milked for marketing purposes while stuff like this happens, it just feels very wrong. If you want to be closed source for reasons, fine, but be honest and upfront about it.
- VyseofArcadia 1y ago
  There's a special place in hell for orgs that do this. Google has been doing the same thing with Android. IIRC Apple at least has always been fairly clear and consistent with what bits of its software are open and what bits aren't. To my knowledge they haven't been breaking off chunks of Darwin and closing them. (Although if I'm wrong do correct me.)
exceptione 1y ago
Even better: Theia. It supports most vscode extensions right out of the box. https://theia-ide.org/ https://theia-ide.org/
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- 0rzech 1y ago
  Supports without auto updating them and along with other annoyances: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43793016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43793016 . VSCodium [1] has much better UX than Theia IDE, IMHO. [1] https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/
  - bobajeff 1y ago
    Yeah I've just tried Theia. Vscodium is still the way to go. I just wish they had answers for issues like running extensions that depend on cpptools. I managed to work around it by installing an old version of cpptools from before the nag prompt that checks you're running it in vscode was added. Zed is almost a good solution but like most they are missing most of vscodes markdown editing features*. Also, right now there's no way to hide the sign in and ai buttons from the UI. * https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/markdown https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/markdown
sureglymop 1y ago
Zed is nice but I still prefer vs codes configuration scheme. Was working on a web/frontend project a while ago and had honestly a very hard time to set up Zed to do everything from formatting to linting and syntax highlighting correctly. Meanwhile in vscode I had to install 3 extensions, enable them for the workspace and they were already aware of each other and seamlessly worked together. I also think it's a mixed opportunity not to allow for something like Lua or a Lisp to configure Zed in. It's very promising but I'm not willing to switch just yet.
bitbasher 1y ago
So, you hopped from one walled garden to another? I don't mean that in a mean way, but have you considered another editor that is more open?
sitkack 1y ago
Zed is a for profit company, aren't they just going to go down the same route?

bangaladore 1y ago

To be clear, I'm don't like the Microsoft has a proprietary Marketplace, but a company openly violating the terms of use for their own profit is a bit much in my opinion. > Cursor allegedly has been flouting Microsoft terms-of-service rules for some time now by setting up a reverse proxy to mask its network requests to the endpoints used by the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace. This allows Cursor users to install VS Code extensions from Microsoft's market. Other VS Code forks tend to point to Open VSX, an alternative extension marketplace.

madeofpalk 1y ago
Yeah, I've noticed this using cursor. I was surprised that the extension marketplace seemed... identical to VS Code.
- benoau 1y ago
  But why should we care? It's obvious Cursor's IDE is VSCode, I cannot think of a single reason why I should be against executing whatever the hell I want on my computer. It's not Cursor doing this, it's me doing this using Cursor.
  - fsloth 1y ago
    That’s not how companies see it. From MS point of view it’s Cursor doing it to them. The way copyright and other rights to your IP you claim to have work in practice, is you need to enforce those claims or loose the rights.
    - benoau 1y ago
      Another way copyright has worked for decades is qBittorrent for instance, is not responsible for infringements by users. Along with massive carve-outs for Microsoft and the gang to avoid that responsibility too, on GitHub and YouTube and many other websites.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]

yoyohello13 1y ago

Look, if you willingly have any piece of your stack relying on Microsoft you have to be ready for the rug pull. They WILL fuck you, it's guaranteed.

znpy 1y ago
Anything that’s not gpl-licensed is going to pull the rug from under your feet, people should have learned this by now. Also, if you do open source contributions, never ever agree to assign copyright to the project: doing so means the project owners can relicense the code base, even towards proprietary license.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  Absolutely. I signed one copyright assignment, ever, with the FSF. I trust them enough to do that, but they're just about the only ones.
  - eikenberry 1y ago
    They don't require it anymore.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      Better yet.
- tuveson 1y ago
  FreeBSD must be pulling a very long con, then.
  - znpy 1y ago
    Uh, yes? Half of the initial mac os x kernel was ripped off freebsd, giving pretty much nothing back. Afaik netapp is also basing their system on bsd. Sony uses freebsd as the OS for their playstation. And many more, giving essentially nothing back.

rs186 1y ago

The intellisense from clangd is much better and faster than the Microsoft C++ extension, if you can set up a compile_commands.json. Although debugging still relies on the Microsoft extension. Although I don't think it's going to be hard to create an extension just for debugging (if it does not already exist?)

Rucadi 1y ago
Lldb and rr (midas) have vscode extensions
geertj 1y ago
Yes, even on medium sized code bases (few 100K lines), the Microsoft C++ extension gets extremely slow. Clangd is a much better option.
senderista 1y ago
Not just faster, I have never been able to get jump to declaration/definition/references to work reliably without clangd.
nomad41 1y ago
I've had the opposite experience with weird C++ projects from some customers that use external toolchains. For some reason even creating the compile_commands.json file with Bear doesn't work, while the proprietary Intellisense extension works out of the box without any configuration.
IshKebab 1y ago
I agree. It's way better. You can use the CodeLLDB extension for debugging. https://github.com/vadimcn/codelldb https://github.com/vadimcn/codelldb
Melonai 1y ago
There are other third-party extensions which rely on the Microsoft C++ one. I have recently ran into this problem with my VSCodium setup.
starkrights 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jonstewart 1y ago

The hilarious part is that old fart C++ programmers (like me) have been the ones most leery of VS Code. Microsoft’s gonna Microsoft, ‘specially with compilers.

kstrauser 1y ago
"Don't be paranoid", they said. "That's ancient history", they said. "Lucy will hold the football this time for sure", they said.
bryancoxwell 1y ago
What do you prefer to VSCode? Just started a job where I’ll be working in C++ and looking for alternatives
- jonstewart 1y ago
  Well, VisualStudio for one. If you’re targeting Windows, you should consider it. VS Code feels slow to me in a way VS doesn’t. I spent most of the past ~fifteen years working in Sublime and just switched between that and the terminal for build and test—not fancy, but then, C++ coding isn’t a speedrun. Sublime is clean, fast, and portable. However, dev tooling has advanced so much now that I started learning and using neovim last year so I could take advantage of good syntax highlighting, LSP, and CoPilot. I don’t get enough daily reps to be good at core vi yet (I am a team manager so most of my time is spent asking questions of devs prefixed with “This is a really dumb question, but”) but despite all the techbros who’ve flocked to it I think neovim is pretty good technology and responsive. You can get the tooling features but control UI/UX; for me, I want as much code on the screen as possible, and I especially resent widgets that eat into vertical space. I started with one of the off-the-shelf all-in-one init.lua configs off github, but it was too complicated and I quickly broke things. What’s worked better is going through a video series on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHTeCSVAFNY&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHTeCSVAFNY&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN...) and building up the init.lua I want from scratch. As noted, I’m not great with it, especially the normal vim motions, but I’ve learned to get around, it’s fast, I can see my code without a million distracting widgets, and I get the benefit of clangd and CoPilot.

concerndc1tizen 1y ago

Do you guys ever feel tired of 'sounding the alarm'? I feel like I've been doing that for years on a wide range of topics, but every time it's like you're talking to cult members. How do you break through to people? People say things like "you're overthinking it", "that's never going to happen", "I don't care because I like using VSCode and not alternatives". Is it individualism? That they only consider their own narrow short-term interests, and have become blind to collective problems?

Guthur 1y ago
I think ultimately we're mostly just not as clever as we think we are, which I think unfortunately we must accept. Where this has become increasingly problematic is rampant materialism and corporatism. If the only real motivator in town, especially for the powerful, is material gain then there is nothing to constrain wanton greed. This becomes even more pronounced with corporations because their overtly stated purpose is not but greed, so even if the individual actors have some transcend moral compass they will be in conflict to their programmed imperative to "do their job". Currently many of the powerful are materialistic and materialism can bring worldly power. Other political paradigms may come to the fore but as it takes a form and gravity it will likely come into some dialectic conflict with the prevailing materialistic status quo. That may be a peaceful resolution, but I'd not be certain of that.
anon7000 1y ago
It's tradeoffs all the way down. VSCode remains one of the best intro editors, because it's free, has next to zero learning curve, and a robust extension ecosystem. I mean, what even is the argument here? That it's not completely open in every possible way? Do we feel so strongly about the heaps of paid IDEs that are completely closed source?
- kstrauser 1y ago
  > Do we feel so strongly about the heaps of paid IDEs that are completely closed source? Me, personally? No, because they're honest about it. I use BBEdit and Nova frequently on my Mac. Those are as closed source as it gets. They never pretend otherwise, though. You pay your money and you know what you're getting. VSCode tries really hard to appear to be open source, as long as you're willing to ignore the million places where they aren't. (Python devs: are you using PyLance? I'm talking to you.) And ironically, those closed editors seem to play more nicely with the ecosystem as a whole. Neither BBEdit nor Nova have ever tried to talk me into installing closed plugins, and the same plugins that work with them work great in Emacs and Zed. If I go to one bar that charged $5 per beer, and another that gives free beer but makes you rent single-use mugs for $5, even though the end price is identical, the rental bar's going to annoy me horrendously. Just admit what it is and let people judge on their own merits.

hexo 1y ago

Good. Now it's time to learn from this important lesson.

silverwind 1y ago

Glad I'm using Sublime Text.

electroly 1y ago

I love Cursor deeply but choosing to be a VSCode fork instead of a VSCode extension was a fatal choice. In the long term I think they either have to retool as an extension or they will go out of business. You can only publicly flout Microsoft's licenses for so long while making a competitor to one of their AAA products.

anon7000 1y ago
Eh, I mean it's a fork. They can keep updating their fork forever. Reality is they want complete control over the product, and VS Code doesn't expose everything in the extension API.
- electroly 1y ago
  Sure, but they depend on a bunch of Microsoft proprietary extensions (that they can't fork) that ban usage in VSCode forks, and they knew this when they made the choice. This was an inevitable outcome from Microsoft's side. I'm sure they want to remain in business more than they want complete control over the product.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    > they depend on a bunch of Microsoft proprietary extensions Microsoft still holds the crown when it comes to C# debugging, but for most proprietary MS extensions there are free, open source alternatives. They may not be as polished as the ones Microsoft actually pays people to maintain, but I don't see why Cursor would actually depend on any of the proprietary ones if you're not using it for C# dev (and even there competitors like Jetbrains have figured out a way to make it work).
    - metta2uall 1y ago
      And hopefully Cursor can give some funding to the FOSS alternatives
datadrivenangel 1y ago

AlienRobot 1y ago

I don't understand the problem. It sounds like the C/C++ extension was proprietary. This sort of thing can always happen when you rely on proprietary software. Make an open source C/C++ extension and you wouldn't have this problem.

zzo38computer 1y ago
Yes, that is what I thought, too. (It would be a good idea to have a open source C/C++ extension anyways, whether or not the proprietary extension stops working with non-Microsoft code.) (Maybe there is such extension; I don't know; I don't use VS Code and VS Codium etc.)
- MelodyUwU 1y ago
  clangd, that is the extension. a lot better than the prioprietary trash microsoft pulls onto the store. open source, too.
jeroenhd 1y ago
>It sounds like the C/C++ extension was proprietary The extension itself it MIT licensed (so could be hosted on the open VSIX store, if it wasn't down because the Eclipse project is suffering from server issues right now). In theory any fork can patch out the check and re-release the extension. However, the extension packages some binaries that are proprietary, and have been since about four years ago. People could re-implement those and re-release an open version of the extension, but you can't just (legally) take the proprietary binaries and ship them if you don't have the license. Open alternatives actually exist, but their quality and ease of configuration depends on your use case. In large projects the proprietary extension seems to be worse from what I've read.

paxys 1y ago

Shitty move (as expected from Microsoft) but I don't see the bigger issue. The beauty of open source is that you can always roll back to a version that did work. Of course continued developement and support from there on is your problem, but Microsoft never owed that to you anyways. Cursor, Codium and all the other VS Code forks have unlimited VC funding and are worth tens of billions of dollars combined. They can afford to contribute back to the ecosystem.

ndiddy 1y ago
The C/C++ extension isn't open source though, and that's where the "doesn't work on forks" DRM is implemented. At least the clangd extension is open source and is a viable alternative.
- paxys 1y ago
  Well if it isn't open source then they should never have been using it in the first place.
- ForOldHack 1y ago
  But what happens when you anger the wizards? Some guy gets 4 two liter bottles of Mt Dew, and in a weekend comes up with a better plugin, and open sources it. Look it up on Monday. I just went from VSCode 1.52 to 1.99, and it's not pretty, but... Can someone convince copilot to rat out it's owners and write out a extension that runs cLisp? And all the emacs code runs in VSCode? ( I am saying this so facietously... ).

kentonv 1y ago

The clangd extension is better anyway, and is open source. The Microsoft C++ extension is not open source; not sure what people were expecting here.

int_19h 1y ago
It's one thing for it to not be open source. It's another thing for its license to explicitly prohibit its use with any other IDE, even if it's API-compatible, even if it's literally exactly VSCode recompiled with another name. And it's yet another thing to proactively insert checks for that.
- surajrmal 1y ago
  Why? If I listed an app on the google play store but intentionally limited it from working when installed by alternative means (eg someone relisting it on an alternative app store without my permission) would that be problematic? Why is this different?
  - flufluflufluffy 1y ago
    People want to be given everything for free, to be able to put the absolute least amount of effort into the code they write, in the name of “open source.”
    - int_19h 1y ago
      I would be fine with it if Microsoft didn't constantly prattle about how VSCode is "open source" all the time without mentioning all those gotchas.
    - gradientsrneat 1y ago
      True! Open source = free stuff for a lot of people. This is why corporations like Microsoft encourage open source - so they can profit off of other programmer's hard work, without giving anything in return in most cases, and in rare cases giving a small donation. So, it goes both ways. But open source nevertheless contributes to the commons when done well. Compare and contrast: Free software.

elashri 1y ago

At least I know one alternative that is on bar (even better according to some people) for the C++ MS extension. What I am worried more about is the Jupyter Notebook MS extensions. I cannot find a suitable alternative and sometimes I am not being able to use it on windsurf/VSCodium (manually installing vsix). I am surprised by that taking into consideration how Jupyter notebooks relevance in data science and ML.

eikenberry 1y ago

> Visual Studio Code (VS Code) no longer works with derivative products such as VS Codium [..] They seem to have this backward. Visual Studio Code is a derivative product of VS Codium.

voxic11 1y ago
No VS Codium is just a alternative build of Visual Studio Code. > This is a repository of scripts to automatically build Microsoft's vscode repository into freely-licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration. https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium
- eikenberry 1y ago
  I thought it was similar to the Chromium/Chrome situation. The naming implied that. But I don't use it and don't follow it that closely. Thanks for the clarification.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Mystery-Machine 1y ago

How is it not open-source? It's licensed under MIT + VS Marketplace Terms: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools?tab=License-1-ov-file#readme https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools?tab=License-1-o... If you fork it and don't use VS Marketplace, it's only MIT. Or am I missing something?

zb3 1y ago
I guess it's the "additional binaries" which are not included.. but that's a guess, we need someone to confirm.
merb 1y ago
You missed that the ‚binary‘ vsix file has a different license: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/ms-vscode.cpptools/license https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/ms-vscode.cpptool... (The license like that existed before cursor, it was basically the reason for vscodium) (Source is https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.cpptools https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscod... the license link at the bottom) The same problem with the c# extension, which has had an even bigger shitstorm since some parts of the extension need a ms account and depending on the company needs to be paid
- int_19h 1y ago
  Also Python.

zb3 1y ago

People on this site will never ever learn that if a company (especially a profitable one) invests into something and then gives it away for free, there must be some kind of strings attached.

DeepYogurt 1y ago

lol

shmerl 1y ago

FYI, neovim has LSP and DAP support, as well as a bunch of other editors.

Spivak 1y ago
neovim is a truly beautiful piece of software that is impossible to undersell. It has made vim into a full feature complete IDE for every language finally with a good editor :P
- shmerl 1y ago
  100%. I switched to it to get true color themes support in the terminal which vim didn't have at the time, but I stayed with it because of all the extensibility for features like above.
tcoff91 1y ago
Neovim is a godsend, I would be in despair without it.
- shmerl 1y ago
  I learned a bunch of Lua because of it :)
  - EasyMark 1y ago
    I've been thinking of that but nvim + lazyvim is so nice and easy as a text editor. I just need to figure out how to keep the shell plugin from thinking it's smarter than me and linting every single time
    - shmerl 1y ago
      Knowing Lua helps making your neovim config too. I prefer it to vimscript.

kazinator 1y ago

This is just Microsoft being classic Microsoft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

pjmlp 1y ago

People not using VSCode on purpose, based on forks, are surprised product owner isn't happy with their license violations. It is like when the same folks act surprised, after Google does something to their Chrome and Android forks. Don't want big tech sponsored products? Pay open source developers, so that they can actually make a living of their work.

dismalaf 1y ago

Why anyone uses anything from Microsoft is beyond me... It's always been clear that VSCode is a trojan horse for MS' EEE strategy. So just don't use MS stuff. Neovim is great, it has great C++ tools. What's the saying? Fool me once...

extr 1y ago

I use cursor primarily because of the great tab autocomplete model, but I've always thought it was a bit scummy they blatantly violate the VS Code licensing. Windsurf ships a special version of the pyright extension for this reason. Why doesn't cursor have to play by the rules too?

chilldsgn 1y ago

This is one of the reasons why I switched to CLion for C++ work, and the fact that VS Code and its derivatives was a pain to configure for C++. I also use PHPStorm for web dev work and we use MS DevOps at work and that extension is unstable, causes IDE errors for me and I will not use MS products just for this one irksome bug. I prefer PHPStorm for my work, because working with PHP in VS Code has never been a great experience for me. I just want my tools to work, I fight with code, I don't want to fight with my tools as well.

charrondev 1y ago
I can also second the usage PHPStorm over VSCode for PHP work. On a team of 10 PHP devs we have just one that prefers VSCode.
LinAGKar 1y ago
I did give CLion a try when looking for an editor, but last I checked CLion required you to use CMake. Also, JetBrains has it all split up between different IDEs. I need on e that supports C, C++, Python, Cython, Makefile, TypeScript, SCSS, XHTML, Shellscript, JSON and XML in the same program. I also need a program that can do CMake and C, and a program that can do C# (including project management, building, tests etc), Batch script, PowerShell, Shellscript, Cake and YAML, preferably with the same UI. And it needs to work on Linux. VSCode is the only one I've found that can handle that.
- chilldsgn 1y ago
  That makes perfect sense. I used VS Code extensively for many years, and it kept on frustrating me over and over. I still use it on the odd occasion to edit a small script, but for larger projects, I prefer a dedicated IDE.
TiredOfLife 1y ago
> This is one of the reasons why I switched to CLion for C++ work So jetbrains allows everyone to use their marketplace and their plugins outside their ides? I can download the jetbrains php extension add it to my own shell and not pay for it?

alfiedotwtf 1y ago

Imagine Debian banning Debian forks downloading from their repos… If Microsoft are going to call VS Code “open source”, then the marketplace should not be selective on clients. If so, it’s not Open Source, it’s Sparkling Virtue Signalling!

jeroenhd 1y ago
I don't see why they'd need to make the marketplace fully open for their client to be open source. Fedora packages a Flatpak client that downloads proprietary software, but that doesn't make Fedora Sparkling Virtue Signalling. Hell, Debian's repository now also include proprietary code (https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003 https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003) so binary BLOBs are perfectly capable of doing distro checks and refusing to run on forks.

Ekaros 1y ago

Is this big deal? Surely with help of AI tools you can implement these extensions in matter of days if not hours. And they will be better.

arjunaaqa 1y ago

Didn’t this affect Windsurf also ?

grougnax 1y ago

The Microsoft Intellisense is really bad compared to the open-source one clangd, anyway.

trenchgun 1y ago

Abandon VSCodium, Return to Emacs

chenzhekl 1y ago

I don't like MS, either. BUT, let's be clear. No one is to obligated to work for free on OSS, not even big companies like MS. They have the right to constraint them to work on their own platforms. If you don't like it, you should fork the previous unconstrained versions or develop your own C/C++ add-on rather than complaining that MS stopped supporting your favorite extension.

johnnyanmac 1y ago
If Microsoft is gonna keep trying to enshitty their apps with unmasked for AI pop-ups that will always come back and even go so far to throw ads in at an OS level: yes, I will feel at least a bit entitled to some "free work" for taking hours of my time. I sure do wish my industry didn't need windows. I'd happily go to Linux and never look back.
mort96 1y ago
"It's not illegal for them to do this bad thing" is such a common defense of companies doing bad things, as if it was the legality and not the ethics that was being discussed. I don't get it.

Yizahi 1y ago

Good to see some of these neural network people actually pay for their real infractions. Granted, this time it was a banal competitor action, but still nice. Just because a license isn't enforced, doesn't make it safe to violate.

auguzanellato 1y ago

After Pylance, Liveshare, and remote development (which among the others also includes dev containers support) I’m not really that surprised.

ryao 1y ago

Am I the only person using tmux+vim+cscope+bash+gcc as a development environment? I do not see the need for these GUIs. I also can develop software from just about anywhere as I only need to SSH into a machine with these things (+git) installed. There are no hostile license terms either. As an added bonus, this setup is excellent for pair programming. Just use voice chat via signal or anything else and have the other person connect to the same tmux session over SSH. That said, if you must use a GUI based development environment, I know of people happily using netbeans. I am not sure why anyone would use Microsoft’s tools for this.

lillecarl 1y ago
I use helix editor, but I wouldn't say my editor needs are that great, I don't "write software at scale". I mostly write infrastructure automation in , terraform, Nix, python and YAML pretty much. For more "developer" focused professions I bet using tools tailored for their needs suits them better, I recently wrote some C# for some Windows software in Visual Studio in a Windows VM and the ootb experience is pretty good. You're not the only one, but you're probably a small minority with your DE setup.
kurtis_reed 1y ago
> I am not sure why anyone would use Microsoft’s tools for this. Really?
- EasyMark 1y ago
  While I use emacs these days for my embedded and "simple" web gui work, I quite miss visual studio, especially the debugger. I'm not sure why everyone acts like Microsoft tools are so bad. I dislike microsoft for their crappy corporate attitude but I quite liked their dev and debug tools, thought they did seem stuck in c89 for far far too long. I was doing c++ gui work along with signal processing backend and it was always a good experience.
g19fanatic 1y ago
My dev environment is very similar (no cscope but ctags yes)! tmux + vim + bash + gcc Vim is so powerful, most people only know how to edit 1 file at a time and how to exit vim... My typical dev environment has over 10k+ open buffers in 1 vim instance. you want to know what "just works" in this environment? vimgrep w/ ## to find anything across these open buffers AND built in Ctrl+P autocomplete... Get good with splits and tabs inside vim and you'll never be limited... it just works.

titaphraz 1y ago

This was foreseen 3 years ago: https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

Certified 1y ago

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Microsoft knew they would never get significant market share unless they offered open source alternatives that let you circumvent the telemetry in the early days of VScode. Embrace. The acquisition of github was part of this strategy. They made an ecosystem that sucked a lot of plugin developer talent into their ecosystem. Extend. Now the market share is firmly in their grasp and competitors have become weaker. Extinguish.

EasyMark 1y ago
This is it in a nutshell, with a lot of corps; IBM, Microsoft, etc. Be careful who you lie in bed with. Seemslike newer companies like Facebook and Google have a much much better track record. They may end a project but they don't suck you in and then say "nah, it's proprietary now"
- GuB-42 1y ago
  Android slowly became that. AOSP used to be the complete Android system, more or less. And when you bought a Nexus device from Google, that's what you got. But they progressively abandoned the stock apps to replace them by their proprietary counterparts, or ones tied to their online services. Then, they replaced their Nexus line of phones with the Pixel line. Pixels are full of proprietary technology, and their last move was to make Android development private.
  - ndiddy 1y ago
    Here's a pretty good Linus Tech Tips video where he installs stock AOSP on a Pixel phone and goes over how it's virtually unusable. Just like you say, while the Pixel UI may be Google's vision for how the Android platform should work, they've moved to keeping their UI development private just like every other Android vendor. Meanwhile, stock AOSP has basically been left to rot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hlRB2izres https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hlRB2izres
    - hollerith 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

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flufluflufluffy 1y ago

A company simply starts enforcing the terms of use that were being openly violated… what’s the issue here? The article claims it could stifle competition — HUh?! Cursor and others were relying on an extension created by Microsoft, now that they can’t do that, they will have to use an extension created by either themselves or another third party, increasing the use of that alternate extension. This will literally help competition. There was no competition beforehand, ppl just accepted the Microsoft extension with open arms. I really don’t know why everybody’s freaking out. You can always use a different editor, or make your own extension.

VyseofArcadia 1y ago
A summary: > Embrace Yay, MS loves open source! > Extend Wow, VS Code is so useful! > Extinguish shocked Pikachu meme

-__---____-ZXyw 1y ago

Protesilaos in this piece https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2019-08-11-why-emacs-switch/ https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2019-08-11-why-emacs-switch/ has the following closing paragraphs: "The gist is that you should be learning by doing. It takes patience and dedication. Study and reuse other people’s code, but do not blindly copy-paste things: patterns of behaviour you do not understand will quickly accumulate, resulting in a potentially fragmented, frustrating experience. The key is to not expect instant gratification. I know, this is how most of the world works these days. Thankfully, Emacs runs contrary to the zeitgeist: it caters to the user who cares deeply about the quality and functionality of their tools." From my reading of the computer history books, it seems like there was a time when this sort of dedication to taking things slow and investing time into your tools and moving steadily towards mastery of all aspects of your craft were seen as de rigueur, part of the game. Moments like this, you want to imagine that some people will turn back to that. I guess when the next big thing comes along with the hype and marketing and "ease-of-use", we'll be off on the same cycle again, though.

miohtama 1y ago

Good news is that with Cursor AI, they can rewrite their own extension from the scratch in two hours! (:

deafpolygon 1y ago

This is why it would be better for more effort and time spent in developing open source software such as neovim. Then we can always be sure tooling is free.