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Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

ghuntley.com

41–50 of 149 posts

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#41
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…

In the software biz, where one day--Allah willing--we may find ourselves in direct/indirect competition with Microsoft, integrating one of their data probes into the heart of the business does not seem like the best move.

VSCode! It has electrolytes!

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#42
This is a good summary of the playing field, but I think they're way overblowing the panic

In summary Microsoft has:

- Made an incredibly good web-based code editor which is 100% OSS, no strings attached

- Made an extensions repository and a bunch of really high quality first-party extensions that have restricted licenses

Sure, in a perfect world the whole thing would be fully OSS. But in the worst-case, where people some day decide they want to fork or whatever, we're still much better off than before VSCode. The editor project is a net gain, even if forking means building some of the other bits yourself. This is still a net increase in value for everyone- even if you exclude the restricted parts; not a decrease, much less an apocalypse.

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#43

Here's $0.00. Take it, and buy yourself a real editor. Anything you choose to pay above that goes to needy children in Uganda. corrected per systemvoltage : https://www.vim.org/sources.php

Shift + Shift + Command + ESC + Shift + 1 + ~ + Shift + Esc + CTRL + Command + Shift + F1 + \x00 + F3 + ~ Phew! Finally back to my terminal

Presses powerbutton for 4 seconds

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#45
post #20

I understand Visual Studio Code as a sophisticated Language Server Protocol frontend, and it generally does a good job at that. The IDE of the future will have Jetbrains grade UX with a heavy emphasis on LSP interfaces that "just work", rather than requiring some investigation about what setting needs to be set to which value and why basic stuff breaks mysteriously.

Interestingly, JetBrains offer Community Edition IDEs with the same extension interface as the paid versions. You could (and likely already can) support LSP integration through that.

(What JetBrains sell is the depth of knowledge of a language and its ecosystem, advanced and specific code manipulation tools, and general polish and attention to detail. This is not impossible but pretty hard to reproduce in an open-source product, sadly.)

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#46
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…

HN posters don’t unanimously agree on loving or hating anything. Stop trying to stir up drama.

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#47
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…

I guess because software developer types loving being the ones doing that to others but hate when they are the ones it is done to?

Anti-competitive for me but not for thee

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#48
post #34

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, th…

The consequences for the majority are such that, over time, leading language ecosystems become tied to Microsoft services.

One example in the article is the availability of alternative editors and IDEs decreasing over time in favor of extensions to VSCode. Essentially, we are driving towards a monoculture - either you are using VSCode and adjacent services, or you choose an alternative, pay the price of compatibility, and experience paper cuts.

Re: Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture

#50
post #7

This is rather scary and disheartening. I finally switched from 12+ years of Eclipse to vscode just last year. After a disproportionate amount of hand wringing and testing. I'd rather move houses twice before moving to a new IDE. But it's true that since running VSCode I feel less like I actually own my environment. I would never rent an IDE or do my work in the cloud, just on basic principle. I really like VS now th…

The Codium build mentioned in OP is fully free. You don't have to use the proprietary version unless you're actually relying on the few extra custom features/addons it provides over the open source one.
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