Integrated Terminal Performance Improvements

I really wish Microsoft had used a different platform to build VS code on, like C#/Mono, Java, anything except Javascript/Electron basically. I just started using VS code for C++ development, trying to switch from Vim, an I basically like everything about the concept, but the execution and quality/polish of the software is mediocre at best. At least three times a day random stuff breaks: code completion stops working, switching between header/source (using a plugin) stops working, all keyboard input except shortcuts stops working, Vim plugin acting up, the app randomly starts to use 40% cpu until I kill it etc. On top of that performance is just so-so for most things (editing, autocomplete), and quite slow for others (e.g. gotoSymbol for the whole project). This was very disappointing for me to find out considering all the praise VS code gets for being ‘probably the best Electron app’.

I don’t mean this as a flame, but the software just feels like all the other applications I tried that are based on web technology. If it works everything is fine, but if you stress the application enough, inevitably things start to fail in ways that suggest it was simply too difficult to properly QA and test the thing to the point it doesn’t hit some weird platform edge case. I sincerely think the product itself is awesome, apparently that’s enough for people to put up with the shoddy stability and general sense of quality?

Maybe there are other reasons and the platform is not actually the problem, but I find it remarkable that something as advanced as VS code fails in similar ways my own web-based projects usually fail.

And now I read they are going to implement their own console rendering using HTML canvas, because the obvious ways to implement it when you are stuck with a Electron have major shortcomings... Somehow I just feel Microsoft with all their talent and resources could have made an even more impressive product if they had made the exact same thing based on some other platform...

Love the integrated terminal in VS Code! Great work by the team on this and appreciate the writeup.

Curious what keyboard shortcut people use to move focus from editors to the Terminal and create new terminals? Anyone use tmux inside terminal?

very good clarification the truth I liked your article, I would love to learn more of this world of technology as a trend to niverl worldwide and develop web pages and develop applications that allow us to go forward and know more about what is new IA

Author of the blog post here. The standard shortcuts are ctrl+` for toggling the panel and ctrl+shift+` for creating a new terminal. This is what I use on top of that:

{ "key": "ctrl+`", "command": "workbench.action.terminal.focus", "when": "!terminalFocus" }

This will focus the terminal if the focus is anywhere else, if the terminal is focused it will close it.

You can add this one if you want ctrl+` to only toggle focus between the terminal and the last editor:

{ "key": "ctrl+`", "command": "workbench.action.focusActiveEditorGroup", "when": "terminalFocus" }

On tmux, Joao from the team did a write up on configuring persistent sessions in the terminal using tmux https://medium.com/@joaomoreno/persistent-terminal-sessions-...

What's the case for using the terminal in VSCode? I use a modern multitasking computer where VSCode is in one area or screen and my terminal in another (and other things in others).

By using my own terminal I get to keep everything custom about that terminal rather than having another one.

Surely there's reasons that I'm missing?

Edit: thanks for all the responses. A lot of great new things I didn't think of before!