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The Era of Visual Studio Code

blog.robenkleene.com

221–230 of 698 posts

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#221
post #172
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who used tramp and switched to VS Code, it's absolutely not the same thing. The difference is plugins work on the remote side of the connection without having to be aware they're in a remote connection. VS Code makes this work by having an agent running on the remote host. For the first time I actually got autocomplete and code jumping working without a horrendous amount of effort.

This is also true with TRAMP. Anything in core Emacs, and any package outside it that isn't aggressively poorly written, works transparently with TRAMP. The core utilities for interacting with the OS such as start-file-process are all TRAMP-aware. (Or more specifically, TRAMP provides file handlers which customize start-file-process)

Yeah. TRAMP is magical, and everything just works. And has for years and years.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#222
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that this feature doesn't work in open source builds of VSCode, it's an MS only thing.

I read about this fact elsewhere also. Could you expand on this a bit? My impression was that VSCode and its associated extensions are open source, so I'm curious how Microsoft could make certain parts exclusive to its own build of VSCode.

> I'm curious how Microsoft could make certain parts exclusive to its own build of VSCode.

By packaging it as an extension that isn't licensed like the rest of VSCode.

Also on a related note, if you're using an open source build of VSCode (such as VSCodium) then you cannot use marketplace.visualstudio.com/

https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#extensions-and-the-mark...

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#223
post #52

I completely switched to VS Code once I discovered the remote development feature [0]. It allows you to run VS Code locally but work on a project in a different environment (via SSH, Docker, WSL). The integration is seamless - search, debugger, terminal, extensions - everything looks and behaves as if it was running locally but is delegated to the configured remote. You can even have different remotes opened at the s…

Remote has been a game changer for my development as well. Work forces me on a Windows machine with the full suite of corporate spyware. Said spyware loses its mind when compiling, debugging, language server inspection, git actions on large repo, etc. Performance loss is somewhere in the region 2-10x.

With remote, I am able to do all coding on a non-infested Linux server with almost seamless usability.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#224
post #214

As far as I know, there are no serious email clients for Visual Studio Code. So the kind of obsessive users, the ones that want to do everything with it, the presence of which indicates a really good piece of software, don't use Visual Studio Code. I consider that a fatal indictment of Visual Studio Code.

"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." -- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#225
Question I have for everyone who doesn't use an IDE

What is your workflow? I find the following to be true, in that one of 3 things happens inevitably:

1. The Text Editor becomes the IDE, (e.g., with VSCode, if you just live in plain HTML, CSS/SCSS/LESS and JSX/TSX/JS/TS all day, its actually pretty great, lots of well maintained extensions and Microsoft really put their energy into capturing into this market with VS Code I think. If you have more than ~10 extensions installed, I'd argue you got an IDE (not including themes or colorizers))

2. They have extensively curated vim or emacs setups that were built over time to add IDE-like features, in some cases I'd argue they become IDEs themselves via deep customization

3. They move to an IDE

So my question is if none of the 3 are true, whats your workflow like?

For context of my own workflow, it slowly over time is all around my IDE (JetBrains user, hardcore. You'll pry it from my cold dead hands). With the exception of running scripts (sometimes, like builds) and using git (git CLI is the best git interface IMO) I have moved it 100% into my IDE, and I'm so much faster at things, including picking up new languages

When I started, I used VS Code heavily professionally, and vim before that, and relied on the CLI for anything outside of editing the code (basically, I think I had some auto formatting setup too), but I hit a wall at some point where I never turned back and went full into JetBrains to this day

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#226

If you want a text editor with longevity try vim or emacs. They aren't dependent on the benevolence of a greedy corporation. Over time VSCode _will_ be raided by the bean counters at MS and it will begin to track you, give you ads about MS products, and lock you in to their ecosystem. I'll never understand why a professional developer would give so much influence over their work to the likes of MS, JetBrains, etc. Su…

You do realize VSCode is open-source?

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#227
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IntelliJ Ultimate has support for all of the languages except C/C++, C#, and Swift/Objective-C.

But there are JetBrains IDEs for those too — CLion, Rider and AppCode respectively. No IDEA how well they work though.

Can’t speak to CLion and AppCode, but Rider is spectacular. It integrates all of Resharper’s (JetBrains’ C# code analysis tool) features with the IntelliJ core that run circles around the bloated, buggy mess that is modern Visual Studio (not to be confused with Visual Studio Code).

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#228
post #198

I find this post along with the comments in "A Picture of Java in 2020" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24551390 to be incongruous with my experience as a professional developer. My first couple of years writing software I used Vim, then VSCode, then worked in a Java shop and was forced to use IntelliJ. I didn't like it at first, but now after a couple of years I cannot see how I lived without it. The idea that…

From my experience out of the box you get poor performance and you have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to change configuration to improve it as knowledge is scattered in many places and not always up to date. Then it still likes to stall from time to time or sometimes doesn't register key presses properly. It's a poor user experience, but even worse is that alternatives are often worse. I wish there was an editor with low latency, smart search, some proper file system database, so it doesn't take ages to open a directory and built in VCS support, that works quicker than manually issuing commands in a terminal.

I think the success of VSCode is because you can easily open it in your current directory from the terminal and it will show you your folder etc. without having to setup a project first and that you are ready to type you code quickly after opening. If I had to open PyCharm every time I want to try some Python in a new directory, I would probably start questioning my life choices. Before VSCode I would just use nano or Sublime.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#229

VS Code is nice for green developers, however I always encourage finding a different editor. This helps encourage exploration, customization, and configuration. You will need to take the training wheels off sometime in your career. Another reason to prefer other editors is they tend to stay out of your way. VS Code tries really hard to make you not even leave the window. Anecdotally, a previous colleague once sold me…

> Another reason to prefer other editors is they tend to stay out of your way. What does this even mean? > VS Code tries really hard to make you not even leave the window. Isn't this exactly what vi and emacs proponents cite as a benefit?

> What does this even mean?

It means if I want to use VS Code for anything other than code editing then I’m out of luck. Where as alternatives are text editors first with code editing support.

VS Code wants to be in your way with a complete set of tools, even including a terminal. And your OS already has one of those.

> Isn't this exactly what vi and emacs proponents cite as a benefit?

I don’t know, is it? Are we talking text editors or IDEs? The difference being that you can configure vi and emacs to be any kind of workspace. An IDE has a text editor, a text editor can be configured to be an IDE. Similar but not the same.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#230

I like the enthusiasm, but this article is a little too breathless to be fully believed. > The most important thing I look for when choosing which tools to use is longevity. In my time, I've programmed using Director, Microsoft QuickBASIC, FutureBASIC, THINK C, CodeWarrior, BBEdit, TextMate, Visual C++, Visual Studio, Sublime Text, Eclipse, Atom, VS Code, IntelliJ, XCode, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. I d…

I agree. With language server protocol becoming commonplace for auto-complete and static analysis, I don't see a huge difference between various text editors.
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