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Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

ghuntley.com

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Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#31

Post by bsder »

infinityplus1 wrote: post #3

This is what happens when you build software on another company's platform. Why put your time making plugins for VS Code when rug can be pulled from under any time?

> Why put your time making plugins for VS Code when rug can be pulled from under any time?

Because VSCode is a huge step forward for the vast majority of people.

For example, it took the might of Microsoft to force everybody onto a Language Server Protocol which is how things should have been done everywhere but nobody wanted to work together to implement it until they were forced to by VSCode eating their market share.

As a further example, VSCode is sweeping aside a whole bunch of absolutely garbage embedded programming environments, and I assure you nobody is crying any tears for them.

Furthermore, if you make your own plugin and distribute it, Microsoft can't pull the rug out from under your plugin. The core of VSCode is open source.

Unfortunately, the most popular plugins are proprietary and Microsoft can and will rip the rug out from under people at some point.

However, the problem is that nobody is throwing the resources behind the open source plugins that Microsoft is throwing behind the proprietary ones. While I find the current situation distasteful, I also see it as "Pony money up or shut the hell up."

Sadly, the world of open source seems to be populated by a bunch of cheapass whiners. So, yeah, Microsoft gonna pwn.

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#32

Post by cowtools »

noduerme wrote: post #13
cowtools wrote: post #9

As far as I understand, it's not a big deal as this is sort of the dumb end of the IDE- just the text editor part, not the compiler or debugger. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know why anyone would bother using a microsoft text editor on linux, but if you are using windows you're already getting screwed pretty hard with telemetry If a windows-using colleague asks me what text editor to use, I just tell them to use…

One reason I chose VS is because I'm a small dev shop, often working alone, and it's one of the only good IDEs around with plugins for syncing via sftp. In many cases that saves me having to use a separate client or configure cloud rollouts for minor code changes. Small devs are the target audience for vscode and also the most likely to be negatively impacted if the environment fractures.

See, what I would do in my case is I would just make a bash script for sftp.

I'm not even sure if small devs benefit from such a bloated editor: the time you have to invest in writing a script or learning a command-line tool is to some extent time invested in learning a fungible skill, whereas time you invest in learning a graphical tool is usually not as extensible or reliable.

A major time-sink in a previous job site was just setting up the environment for new developers, renewing licenses, configuring plugins, dealing with unexpected errors due to the environment, etc.

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#33

Post by [deleted] »

onion2k wrote: post #21

...Microsoft in true Microsoft form of moving ever so slowly and doing it over a generation of people as not to spook them has been transitioning their customer base into consumers of services offered by Microsoft. A company like Microsoft is changing the software industry by moving developers to a SaaS model, and articles like this suggest this is a terrible thing because we're losing control over what we do, they'r…

[deleted]

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#34

Post by keithnz »

Personally, I wouldn't actually care if Visual Studio Code was completely proprietary with zero open source element. I think the imagined consequences tend to mostly be not that significant for the vast majority of people, at most it would be a blip in the timeline as people switch to something else. The actual consequence (as implied by this article) seems to be people who build their business around these tools, they are entering a particular ecosystem backed by a large corporate and they are leveraging on the big corporates ability to make that ecosystem popular. That kind of is what it is. Pros and Cons.

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#35

Post by nine_k »

onion2k wrote: post #21

...Microsoft in true Microsoft form of moving ever so slowly and doing it over a generation of people as not to spook them has been transitioning their customer base into consumers of services offered by Microsoft. A company like Microsoft is changing the software industry by moving developers to a SaaS model, and articles like this suggest this is a terrible thing because we're losing control over what we do, they'r…

Do we even visit the same HN site?

The HN crowd i'm used to loves open source, self-hosting, prefers privacy, frowns upon the prevalence of subscription-based SaaS, and yearns for the times when the internet was less laden with advertising and attempts to make a quick buck.

Maybe you mistake HN for Y Combinator, the company that runs it? I'd say that Y Combinator is picky, relative to other VCs, and I don't remember hearing about any sleazy business they'd be backing, unlike, sadly, some other well-known VC companies.

So I'm sort of at a loss.

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#36

Post by chii »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #15
cowtools wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally true, unless that vendor is google. Manifest v3 is still in recent memory.

Yeah, it sucks what's happening with browser extensions and configurability in general. Opera 3, released in 1997, allows the user to override author styles with their own. Same for IE6, released in 2001. But that's a different aspect of the platform -- the browser itself. At least for the time being, on the Web side, there are so many different other browsers, that Chrome cannot break step with all of them at once.…

> there are so many different other browsers, that Chrome cannot break step with all of them at once.

i dont think this is true any more - chrome has such a high market share that they can basically dictate the standards, and force other browser vendors to follow suit.

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#37

Post by swyx »

ghuntley wrote: post #22
forkfork wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is one of the most influential NFT critics: e.g. https://amp.smh.com.au/business/companies/extortion-why-web3...

Thanks forkfork. I'm _absolutely_ not an NFT shill and my avatar is funny af because NFT/Web3 is meant to be decentralised but it's built on central platforms. The avatar/pfp that I use received a DCMA takedown thus is an doubley illegal NFT [this will make sense if folks are aware of the RRBAYC lawsuit] that I can't change. It exists in "my wallet" but it can't be used anywhere. ps. The first ever Crypto Policy Symp…

ok that could be a bit clearer because i absolutely judged you for having a BAYC hexagon profile.. nuance is lost on first impression

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#39

Post by pxc »

memco wrote: post #14
d0mine wrote: post #2

"The move affects millions of developers, as the Python extension is by far the most popular tool in the VS Code Marketplace" One of the reasons to use Emacs is to avoid asking Microsoft for permission to code.

Does eMacs have a good remote editing and debugging system comparable to VSC? I’ve tried pycharm and nvim, but both were clunky and did not work as well if at all for remote debugging and editing with navigation, autocomplete, linting etc. VSC does all that with very little manual configuration required.

> Does eMacs have a good remote editing and debugging system comparable to VSC?

Emacs has a remote editing system sort of similar to VSCode, but much older, less slick, and a bit quirkier. But imo it's quite good. It's called TRAMP mode: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#40

Post by onion2k »

xwolfi wrote: post #29
onion2k wrote: post #21

...Microsoft in true Microsoft form of moving ever so slowly and doing it over a generation of people as not to spook them has been transitioning their customer base into consumers of services offered by Microsoft. A company like Microsoft is changing the software industry by moving developers to a SaaS model, and articles like this suggest this is a terrible thing because we're losing control over what we do, they'r…

You comingle HN and Ycombinator maybe? I dislike VCs and startup culture while I work in a 150yo bank ... I still like HN and shit on the model you described.

I dislike VCs and startup culture..

I suspect you are quite unusual in the demographics of HN readers then.

while I work in a 150yo bank

I'm British so I think 150 year old banks are quite new.

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