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The Era of Visual Studio Code

blog.robenkleene.com

261–270 of 698 posts

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#261
No where in the article or the 247 comments does Jupyter Lab merit a single mention?

It’s clearly not a full fledged IDE. Yet. But it is building towards that. Is fully open source. Has a broad and deep ecosystem behind. Born in the cloud. Just got Kite plugin for better autocomplete.

If you’re doing data science it’s a very viable contender.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be more interested in VSCode if Microsoft's strategy was to relentlessly implement the most popular plugins into VSCode natively such that the most commonly used and needed functions were built in and did not require plugins. The problem with systems that are really just frameworks for other to build on is they become reluctant to build stuff that plugins exist for. The philosophy becomes to depend on the plugins…

>> I'd be more interested in VSCode if Microsoft's strategy was to relentlessly implement the most popular plugins into VSCode natively such that the most commonly used and needed functions were built in and did not require plugins. Unlike the FANG companies, Microsoft doesn't tend to rip the carpet out from under independent developers like that.

Right, but they would. Plugins aren't paid right now, so all I'd think it would take would be Microsoft saying "hey, people like your plugin, we'll pay you to maintain it, and if you don't want to maintain it, we'll inhouse it."

To avoid left-pad situations

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#263
post #107

A jumped to Atom and hated it and returned to Sublime. I have used VS Code, but never made the full jump because Atom set a precedent for Electron editors.

I switched from Atom to VS Code after a long time as I always disliked the way VS Code looks but at some point you have to admit that Atom is abandonware (Microsoft isn't going to develop two text editors) and VS Code is way more lightweight than Atom ever ways.

I agree. It is definitely here to stay.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#264
post #255
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fancy IDEs are lubricants for high-friction languages. If a language is already low-friction, there won't be much benefit to be gained from an IDE, as even a plain text editor will already get you near to optimal productivity in said language. Personally, I'd rather use a plain-old "code editor" (with at most syntax highlighting, but no snippets, let alone autocomplete), in part because doing so will actively steer m…

Java doesn't have a lot of friction. In fact, IntelliJ is probably the closest you'll get today to the "golden age" of programming with something like Turbo Pascal. Also, good luck doing major refactoring with a text editor. In 2020 we can do better than find and replace.

The way people use Java is a problem.

Spin a blank "hello world" project in Android Studio and you get no less than 79 files, and it won't work the next time you update Android Studio because of some Gradle errors.

I don't know what went wrong, but "hello world" should not be 79 files, it should be something that I can hand-code in something less than an IDE.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#265
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fancy IDEs are lubricants for high-friction languages. If a language is already low-friction, there won't be much benefit to be gained from an IDE, as even a plain text editor will already get you near to optimal productivity in said language. Personally, I'd rather use a plain-old "code editor" (with at most syntax highlighting, but no snippets, let alone autocomplete), in part because doing so will actively steer m…

I haven’t used IntelliJ, but if it gives Java developers half of the refactoring options and shortcuts that JetBrains Resharper gives C# developers, it must be worth its weight in gold. C# is the only language for which I have had to deal with large monolithic codebases. For smaller codebases, I prefer VS Code. Especially now that I go back and forth between JS, Typescript, Python, and occasionally Go and Java. I’m a…

The one editor thing is key. I’m in and out of different languages and file formats. Many times, I just need to edit text. Today, I was navigating perl in Goland just because I don’t want to dance between editors.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need all the plugins. You just need a curated set. And some of the plugins are fantastically high quality. The Microsoft Python one is excellent, as is the Remote development one. I'm a fan of VS Code because in spite of it having a plug in system, there are great plug ins there. And that one single great plugin is all that is needed (for that specific purpose)

Does VSCode have something similar to emacs’s spacemacs, doom or prelude?

I only dabble in VS Code on occasion, so only saw this in passing: https://github.com/VSpaceCode/VSpaceCode

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t used IntelliJ, but if it gives Java developers half of the refactoring options and shortcuts that JetBrains Resharper gives C# developers, it must be worth its weight in gold. C# is the only language for which I have had to deal with large monolithic codebases. For smaller codebases, I prefer VS Code. Especially now that I go back and forth between JS, Typescript, Python, and occasionally Go and Java. I’m a…

The one editor thing is key. I’m in and out of different languages and file formats. Many times, I just need to edit text. Today, I was navigating perl in Goland just because I don’t want to dance between editors.

On top of that, there are extensions for everything - including CloudFormation linters.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#268
post #238
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…

Fancy IDEs are lubricants for high-friction languages. If a language is already low-friction, there won't be much benefit to be gained from an IDE, as even a plain text editor will already get you near to optimal productivity in said language. Personally, I'd rather use a plain-old "code editor" (with at most syntax highlighting, but no snippets, let alone autocomplete), in part because doing so will actively steer m…

> Imagine if there was a hammer that was so badly-balanced that—despite being not too hard to lift—you needed to be wearing a powered exoskeleton to accurately hold and swing it. That'd be a bad hammer, right? Hammers are hand-tools; it's an expectation that they'll work when used "manually", i.e. with raw human capability alone.

I remember people making similar arguments when cars started to have power steering.

> Programming languages are hand-tools as well, in an essential sense. Like mathematics, the "interface" through which we manipulate a codebase is plain, raw text — sequences of symbols. We humans understand source code by reading it with our eyes; and then we write or modify it by editing it the same as any other text. We can do the whole thing on paper, or a blackboard, or even purely in our mind's eye.

I disagree; programming languages are primarily tools for programming on computers, and expecting them to be skeuomorphic to a particular approach may hold us back, just like expecting a CAD program to work the same as a physical drafting table or expecting a rendering engine to use a TV-like fixed framerate.

Being able to push secondary parts of a program to be foldable, or visible on mouseover but not by default, makes it easier to communicate understanding to other humans. And actually that's a more faithful recreation on how you'd communicate in writing - on a blackboard you might use small text, or footnotes, or a verbal explanation. A mathematical paper is almost never "plain text" in the sense of being a linear sequence of ascii characters and nothing more. A language whose design embraces IDEs can be a better tool than one that flattens everything into the binary of written in the code or completely invisible.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#269
Performance is a huge issue with vs code. I’ve been using it for a couple of years and am seriously considering going to a minimal vim setup. My editor slowing to a crawl and needed to be restarted once or twice a day on a brand new high end MBP is a constant annoyance.

And if I want to test running a swarm or several servers locally, the memory usage really does become relevant.

Re: The Era of Visual Studio Code

#270
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 e…

I see them as complementary. VS Code shines if you’re jumping between independent codebases for distinct projects, and startup time matters.

But my startup monorepo I keep loaded in IntelliJ for days at a time and have never looked back. For the 1% of time it’s laggy due to a JVM GC or background indexing, the other 99% of the time it’s immensely productive to have e.g. full-stack debug breakpoints that Just Work, well-designed customizable gutters, integrated linting, and more.

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