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> It is a vs code fork Google may have won the browser wars with Chrome, but Microsoft seems to be winning the IDE wars with VSCode
by charliebwrites 11mo ago
> It is a vs code fork
Google may have won the browser wars with Chrome, but Microsoft seems to be winning the IDE wars with VSCode
- AstroBen 11mo agoIn user numbers, maybe. JetBrains is far ahead in actual developer experience though
- catlover76 11mo agoAt best, that's subjective, but it's fact that JetBrains is comically far behind when it comes to AI tooling. They have a chance to compete fresh with Fleet, but they are not making progress on even the basic IDE there, let alone getting anywhere near Cursor when it comes to LLM integration.
- AstroBen 11mo agoJetBrains' advantage is that they have full integration and better understanding of your code. WebStorm works better with TypeScript than even Microsoft's own creation. This all translates into AI performance Have you actually given them a real test yet - either Junie or even the baseline chat?
- 9cb14c1ec0 11mo agoJunie is good. Needs a few UI tweaks, but the code it generates is state of the art.
- catlover76 11mo ago[dead]
- aDyslecticCrow 11mo agoI wouldn't underestimate Eclipse user statistics. That may sound insane in 2025, but I've seen a lot of heavily customized eclipse editors still kicking around for vendor specific systems, setting aside that Java is still a pretty large language in its own right.
- vovavili 11mo agoI wouldn't bet on an Electron app winning anything long-term in the dev-oriented space.
- jshen 11mo agoIt's been winning for a while
- wnevets 11mo agoEven if those devs are vibe-oriented?
- verdverm 11mo agowhy? I don't have a problem with it, building extensions for VS Code is pretty easy Alternatives have a lot of features to implement to reach parity
- scotty79 11mo agoEase of writing and testing extensions is actually the cause why Electron won IDE wars. Microsoft made a great decision to jump on the trend and just pour money to lap Atom and such in optimization and polish. Especially when you compare it to Microsoft effort for desktop. They acumulated several more or less component libraries over they years and I still prefer WinForms.
- Aurornis 11mo agoComplaining about Electron is an ideological battle, not a practical argument. The people who push these arguments don’t care that it actually runs very well on even below average developer laptops, they think it should have been written in something native.
- verdverm 11mo agosame people pushing rust as "it's just faster" without considering the complexities that exist outside the language that impact performance?
- 11mo ago
- alansammarone 11mo agoI believe our definitions of "winning the IDE wars" are very, very different. For one thing, using "user count" as a metric for this like using "number of lines of code added" in a performance review. And even if that was part of the metric, people who use and don't absolutely fall in love with it, so much so that they become the ones advocating for its use, are only worth a tiny fraction of a "user". neovim won the IDE wars before it even started. Zed has potential. I don't know what IntelliJ is.
- dabockster 11mo ago> I don't know what IntelliJ is. It started as a modernized Eclipse competitor (the Java IDE) but they've built a bunch of other IDEs based on it. Idk if it still runs on Java or not, but it had potential last I used it about a decade ago. But running GUI apps on the JVM isn't the best for 1000 reasons, so I hope they've moved off it.
- hatsix 11mo agoAndroid Studio is built on the IntelliJ stack. Jetbrains just launched a dedicated Claude button (the button just opens up claude in the IDE, but there are some pretty neat IDE integrations that it supports, like being able to see the text selection, and using the IDE's diff tool). I wonder if that's why Google decided to go VS code?
- ffsm8 11mo agoUh, isn't that the regular Claude code extension that's been available for ages at this point? Not jetbrains but anthropics own development? As a person paying for the jetbrains ultimate package (all ides), I think going with vscode is a very solid decision. The jetbrains ides still have various features which I always miss whenever I need to use another IDE (like way better "import" suggestions as an easy to understand example)... But unless you're writing in specific languages like Java, vscode is way quicker and works just fine - and that applies even more to agentic development, where you're using these features less and less...
- WD-42 11mo agoVSCode IS chrome though.
- thanhhaimai 11mo agoVSCode is based on Chromium. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/vscode.md https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/v...
- lokimedes 11mo agoWhich is based on Apple Webkit? The winner is always the last marketable brand.
- onion2k 11mo agoThat drives exactly $0 of Apple's revenue. It's only a win if you care about things that don't matter.
- hu3 11mo agoAnd Apple is not even the last node in the chain. WebKit came from KDE's khtml Every year is the year of Linux.
- usrnm 11mo agoBoth are based on khtml. We could be living in a very different world if all that effort stayed inside the KDE ecosystem
- embedding-shape 11mo agoWhich came from "the KDE HTML Widget" AKA khtmlw. Wonder if that's the furthest we can go? > if all that effort stayed inside the KDE ecosystem Probably nowhere, people rather not do anything that contribute to something that does decisions they disagree with. Forking is beautiful, and I think improves things more than it hurts. Think of all the things we wouldn't have if it wasn't for forking projects :)
- Dylan16807 11mo agoOn the other hand if that had stopped google from having a browser they push into total dominance with the help of sleazy methods, maybe that would have been better overall.
- cyberax 11mo ago15 years ago, every company had its own "BlahBlah Studio" IDE built on top of Eclipse. Now it's VSCode. Meanwhile, JetBrains IDEs are still the best, but remain unpopular outside of Android Studio.
- philipwhiuk 11mo agoAnd IntelliJ PyCharm’s lack of popularity surprises me. Maybe it’s not good enough at venvs
- 9cb14c1ec0 11mo agoOh, it's good at venvs. Lots of flexibility too on whether to use pip, conda, or uv.
- weakfish 11mo agoIME pycharm’s weakness is not integrating with modern tooling like ruff/pyright - their built in type checker is terrible at catching stuff, and somehow there isnt an easy way to run MyPy, black or isort in it. If there’s a workflow I’m missing please let me know because I want to love it!
- WD-42 11mo agoI just checked and I don’t even have the JVM installed on my machine. It seems like Java is dead for consumer applications. Not saying that’s why they aren’t popular but I’m sure it doesn’t help.
- 11mo ago
- pstuart 11mo agoDevelopers, developers, developers! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs
- harrall 11mo agoIn the grand scheme of things, Microsoft had always spent more money on developer tooling than most other companies, even in the 90s. Hence even the infamous Ballmer quote.
- stefan_ 11mo agoI see the VSCode management has been firmly redirected to prioritize GitHubs failing and behind "AI Coding" competition entry. When that will predictably falter expect them to lose interest in the editor all together.