I have not used an IDE since I ditched Turbo Pascal in middle school, but now I am at a place where everyone and their mother uses VS Code and so I’m giving it a shot.
The thing is, I’m finding the “just works” mantra is not true at all. Nothing is working out of the box. And then for each separate extension I have to figure out how to fix it. Or I just give up and circumvent it by using the terminal.
What’s even the point then?
IDK maybe its a matter of getting used to something new, but I was doing fine with just vim and tmux.
VS Code is a great text editor for me. I write Markdown documents, manipulate bulk strings, and diff files with it. Aside from small scratch projects, its consistency and reliability as an IDE is varied for me. It’s far from “just works”, at least for the types of things I do (C, C++, C#, Rust) and isn’t really on my list of editors I’d recommend for those workloads.
You can make it work, but it’s going to require extensive time spent figuring out what extensions to use (and their quirks), ensure that you have a working setup to the language server, and learn how each environment wants you to setup its tasks and launch configurations, if applicable. Unlike larger IDEs like VS or Rider, it doesn’t have a consistent “new project” process either, so you’re on your own for that.
I wonder what troubles you had with rust in vscode. In my experience. I just install the rust-analyzer extension and it works every time.
Plus some (optional) extension to display the available dependency versions in the Cargo.toml.
Maybe debugging can be a bit tricky, but other than that it’s just installing 1 (or 2) extensions.
It’s exactly that: the trickiness around debugging is the main thing that feels like it’s got some barriers compared to a turnkey solution in an IDE. I heard VS Code and Godot was available until I realized that the LSP and debugger for Godot 4.x was unusable for months until the recent refactor.
Don’t get me wrong though, I am totally using VS Code for my Rust projects. It just isn’t a turnkey solution that I’d recommend to someone if they just want to hit “New project” and do the whole write-compile-debug loop without needing to understand anything. (I had also used it a while back prior to rust-analyzer being the main go-to extension, I think…)
everyone and their mother uses VS Code
This is usually a good reason to avoid something. Especially if that something comes from Microsoft.
So things stop being usable as soon as they become mainstream?
Monocultures are bad. Popularity very rarely tracks quality. And once something is overwhelmingly popular, it usually goes to shit, because the momentum is enough to keep it successful.
See: Windows. Outlook. Reddit. CrowdStrike.
But vscode hasn’t gone to shit…
Lots of things have also gotten popular without going to shit either.
Give it time. This is Microsoft we’re talking about. Look at GitHub or Skype.
I use jetbrains’ PyCharm. Work paid for it. It does the things I want it to do (works with docker, git integration, local history, syntax highlighting for every language I use, refactor:rename and move, safe delete, find usages,.find declaration, view library code, database integration, other stuff I’m forgetting)
Well it may absolutely suck, but they’ll tell you
- it’s everywhere
- once you learn a few tricks it’s great
- you’ll get used to a non-intuitive macro and command setup
- adapt your entire workflow around it and you’re fine
- it’s … fast?
- it has such power
The last two are lies. And I was talking about vi here, in the hopes you’ll get it. And like when I first used vi, the best thing was learning there were alternatives.
Check out Pulsar
It’s basically the continuation of Atom. It’s got rough edges though regarding plugins but it’s good enough to allow me to avoid VSCode.
I use VSCodium instead of Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code is a closed source distribution of “Code - OSS”. The names get a little confusing but Code - OSS is like Chromium, Visual Studio Code is like Google Chrome, and Codium is like ungoogled chromium. I use this because Visual Studio Code masquerades as being Open Source while hiding most of the functionality behind extensions in the marketplace while not letting other tools access the marketplace.
Do not use Microsofts Telemetry Studio Code but Code-OSS or VSCodium.
See: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/267
Regarding your question Code is not powerful enough of what we do at work. There we use IntelliJ IDEA. Our frontend guys use Code as it’s enough for them and they usually are not that quality oriented, be it their tools or their product. Sadly mediocre is enough.
Honestly I don’t care about telemetry. I’m not trying to start an argument about it, I’m just explaining to readers that there are still reasons to use VSCodium over Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code (the build available) masquerades as open source while having a non-FOSS license. https://code.visualstudio.com/license Also, Microsoft does not allow other programs (like VSCodium or Code - OSS) to access the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace. Being plugin based, that essentially means all useful functionality in Code-like editors is gated behind a proprietary website you aren’t allowed to access except with a proprietary editor (Visual Studio Code). https://open-vsx.org/about
could you give a couple examples of how vscode degrades quality?
Vs codium, which is based on vscode but spyware is stripped out
Since no one told me this, I will trek people:
If you go for codium, be warned that one of the big points of vs code, extensions, gets a lot more of a hassle.
One of the things you lose is access to Microsofts extension store, and they’ve added their own instead, and that one is missing a lot.
If you want extensions from the Microsoft store, you need to download them manually from the website, and keep them updated manually.
This includes the Python extension, so no Python for you (or at least no Pylance ;_;)
VSCodium > VSCode
I use it because I’m switching between different projects and frameworks a lot. I found that me aligning with expected use patterns was easier than constantly adapting things for my magic setup.
I’m also not a config hound.
I switched to Zed recently. Very basic and definitely is not as feature rich as VSCodium but I’m sure it’ll get better.
Zed looks very promising. There are only 2 things that prevent me from using it.
- The git lens vs code extension
- Rust-analyzer configuration
I’ll keep an eye on zed, but I think most people will stay on VSCode until zed gets feature-rich enough that they won’t miss VSCode.
VSCode isn’t an IDE, although you can kinda make it work like an IDE with extensions.
I use Visual Studio Professional as my IDE at work, but we do a lot of C#.
Like (Neo)vim, it’s a PDE: Personalized Development Environment
Props to TJ DeVries for coming up with that term.
With these modern extensible text editors the line between IDE and editor is too blurry to really tell. Many things people would agree are IDEs (like Eclipse) are entirely based around a plugin architecture too. I don’t think it’s worth it to split hairs over whether Visual Studio Code and similar programs are or aren’t IDEs. With enough plugins, they’re IDEs. With too few, they aren’t. Where that line is is entirely subjective.
I mostly use VS Code as a simple text editor with some of the CSV plugins. Though with JetBrains coming out with Fleet I’ve started to use that more. It doesn’t have plugin support yet so it’s not getting a lot of use.
For everything else I use whatever JetBrains IDE fits. For work, it’s mostly IntelliJ, DataGrip, PyCharm, and DataSpell. At home, it’s IntelliJ DataGrip and CLion. I guess I’ve kinda drank the JetBrains KookAid, but to me, it’s worth the subscription to the all products pack. Especially if you are a polyglot since you keep a consistent IDE experience.
As @terrehbyte@ani.social says VS Code is ok for simpe text stuff but I prefer Goland and PyCharm for development. As a Child of TP6 I miss the simplicity of the IDE and the color scheme :)
Hell no, Emacs and nvim UX is far superior. I won’t ever go back to clicking.
What issues specifically?
It takes maybe 10 minutes to find good extensions and get them set up
I use VS code, mainly for the jupyter notebook integration.
