Hot Exit is one of those features that I didn't think I needed or wanted...until I started using Sublime like a notepad to store text, but not save it. I'm excited that this feature is now in VSCode now, and it also works with files that have never been saved just like Sublime.
Sublime Text 3 checks to see if the currently opened version differs from the file system. If it does, it prompts the user to keep the current version or replace it with the disk version. VS Code just replaces the current version with the disk version and doesn't retain history so you can't undo this.
I lost about an hour of work yesterday because I had a file open in both VS Code and Sublime Text. Pressing save in Sublime Text wiped out all changes. :(
Sublime's updates are dismal. https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/ I had to switch to Atom just because the development is stagnant. I liked Sublime very much. But it's been 2 years already..
The official download page says "Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta"
It's been like that for years. First build is from January 2013, it's almost 4 years already. I don't know what specifically is missing there, I just know I'm not comfortable using beta version (with little hope it will ever come out of beta) of a product for daily work. I see it as even developers don't consider it stable enough.
I wished they had this feature 2 days ago... I spent 3h writing issues in VSCode before submitting them on Github issues, then my laptop ran out of battery (and of course it was in an untitled file so it was unsaved)... I just wanted to cry.
BTW, really awesome job VSCode team :) I love what you're doing!
Isn't just better to enable autosave? (VS Code has that as well). I learned its usefulness from PHPStorm, where it is switched on by default. So I just not explicitly save anymore, it is done automatically and immediately.
Hot exit is still useful when auto save is on as it works with untitled files. Crash recovery also comes with hot exit regardless of whether the feature is on or off. (I'm on the vscode team)
VS Code is, along with Typescript and Vue, one of my favorite things to have entered my world in the past 6 months. They have been rapidly improving VSC and I am exceptionally happy with it.
Running 'node debug script.js' will drop you into the command line debugger. It's a little painful though as the command line debugger does not have support for moving up/down stack frames.
printf-debugging is a fine way to debug a ton of cases, especially programs with concurrent components. The process of debugging step by step isn't necessarily superior or faster.
The Chrome based dev tools have been an option for years using node-inspector. Had all of the basics that you would expect from a debugging. Breakpoints, step into/out/over, variables available at that location in the stack, REPL console etc.
It was kind of a pain in my experience to use the Chrome debugger to be your main editor. I've not used VSC for this, but I imagine it's nice to not have to flip back and forth between tools.
I am pretty to the javascript/node world. The debugging situation is pretty pathetic in my view. Most people I know use a ton of logging like we did with C/printf 25 years ago.
Using awareness of how to use a debugger is a reasonable interview technique WRT javascript devs. In general, ignorance is not a pejorative but if a candidate walk into an interview claiming to be an expert and I find out that you debug in anger using console log, I'm calling bullshit. They're either very green or too lazy to have investigated the tools available. Jr devs are, obviously, another story. Read up on how to use node --inspect for newer versions of node or node-inspector for older versions.
One common need that is a sad state of affairs in the Node world is performance tooling. It's available and competent professionals should invest in it once it becomes necessary but is a pain in the ass to setup and run.
As usual in this industry there is a whole new generation of devs coming up that have forgotten stuff that has been standard for a long time. Then somebody implements this old stuff for the new tech and people think it's major innovation. I am sure soon somebody will create a node profiler.
>In general, ignorance is not a pejorative but if a candidate walk into an interview claiming to be an expert and I find out that you debug in anger using console log, I'm calling bullshit.
Some of the best programmers advocate for printf over debuggers...
And some of the crappiest programmers run around the debugger for hours with no idea what could be wrong in the program, stepping blindly here and there...
To explain this further, I think printf is more focused and direct than running around in the debugger. You need to have a clearer idea of what you're looking for in advance and know how to exclude parts of the program as possible culprits, which I think helps with debugging in general.
And, come to think of it, with hot code reloading, printf can be just as immediate, but more direct and focused, than
using the debugger. Shame that few languages/environments offer hot code reloading...
Using printf on everything is basically the same as debugger but a lot slower. People also tend to commit those added lines (sometimes commented for future uses) which clutters code base. I think that using permanent logs on higher verbosity plus debugger is a lot more productive.
It sounds like you are trying to sell lack of a debugger as a feature that forces devs to to be more aware and more precise. Then we should maybe go back to writing code on paper first, create punch cards, submit to the mainframe and get the result next day? Then you have an even better idea of what your program does.
Debuggers are a valuable tool that nowadays should be standard.
>Then we should maybe go back to writing code on paper first, create punch cards, submit to the mainframe and get the result next day?
Just because someone advocates taking a step back in some particular issue (and for specific reasons they argue about) doesn't mean it logically follows that they advocate going all the way back.
Two things: "slippery slope" fallacy and "marginal returns".
I'm pretty sure we can find some ways in which you yourself advocates NOT using some modern language feature in favor of an older practice (e.g. you might be against visual programming languages). Does that mean you are ultimately in the same "punch cars" camp as you suggest I am?
I don't know why there are so many non-answers or flat out incorrect answers to your question.
Yes, js devs use debuggers and have for years. Firebug was created and popularized for browser js 10 years ago[1]. Node.js was released 7 years ago, got a debug option one year later using node debugger. It was CLI based and a bit shit. Tools which leveraged Node's debug protocol and Chrome's developer tools (node-inspector) for example were started 5 years ago[2]. Most recently some group associated (maybe on?) the Chrome team started creating a cleaner debug protocol and integrating directly with the Chromium project[3]. That's become the gold standard and is the standard way of debugging for Node 7+[4]. VSCode uses that protocol to offer debugging directly from the editor.
For client code I'd use the chrome debugger constantly. I mean for debugging a node server.
Maybe there was some way I didn't know about. There's the 'inspect' flag in node 6 now that prints out a link you can copy into your chrome browser to debug server node code.
Firebug quickly became the defacto later on. But telling your average web designer about breakpoints, stepping over and stepping into would cause their eyes to glaze over.
I don't know, I don't use intelliJ and I don't want to pay for webstorm. Somebody else probably knows.
Anyway I like how low-memory-on-the-disk and low RAM usage VScode is, so I probably wouldn't enjoy intelliJ and webstorm for those reasons. I felt like even sublime was too bulky for me. Maybe they're good for other people and that's fine, but vscode just ticks all the right boxes.
Out of curiosity, what is the reason, you don't want to pay?
Is it your financial restriction or that there is something philosophical about sticking with free stuff whenever possible?
Once you figure that if anything makes your days better by spending $10 or so a month, not choosing the best tool for the job sounds simply dumb.
I have a friend who sticks with plain vim uncustomized because he doesn't want to deviate from the default in fear of not being able to seamlessly use other environment sounds utterly stupid wasting productivity for 99% of the time being on his own machine.
I'm all about paying for things that add value - I haven't been convinced webstorm will add value.
I am very fortunate in my means right now, but I come from a poor family, and spending money is emotionally trying for me. I gain pleasure from pushing my monthly expenses down as tight as I can. It seems melodramatic but paying for webstorm might just stress me out - I'd constantly feel a need to justify it, like when I tried subbing to World of Warcraft - I'd catch myself calculating fun per dollar. Euck.
Anyway I'm a simple front end dev so I don't think it's necessary for now. As I branch out into Python perhaps Webstorm's tools will add tremendous value, I have seen some cool stuff but I just don't need it for now.
Well, then it's kind of a far stretch to claim vscode debugging is better than ANY other solution if you haven't tried them all. Not even the most popular once like webstorm.
I find them to be very complimentary. I switch between VSCode (for writing, code editing) and PHPStorm (refactoring, debugging). Beyond webdev, VSCode offers excellent Markdown support. With auto-previews, custom styles, and many great extensions, it's worth installing just for the Markdown support alone. https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/markdown
I wasn't aware it was possible to debug a running node server in the chrome browser until the addition of the 'inspect' flag in node 6. Maybe it was possible, I'm not superleet or anything.
Do you use typescript with vue? I had researched it at one point, though admittedly not too far in depth, but came away with a conclusion that vue doesn't lend itself well to types.
I miss the minimap too but if I honestly think about it I like the highlighted edits/changes in the scroll bar more. a git diff minimap might be interesting.
I know they're working on styling, but now that the titlebar is black, too (on Mac), I really, really would appreciate if the status bar would blend in, too.
Can't upvote this enough. One dev mentioned in a GitHub issue that the blue color is for branding reasons [1]. This is so absurd, it hurts. That status bar is the most distracting and annoying thing ever.
See link for suggestions how to mitigate. I use the tip from the person named sysrpl. VSCode is unusable with that blue color for me.
We do have a plan to enable this - unfortunately it did not make 1.8 but we plan to work on it in 1.9. So you should have some additional options soon.
Is it possible to add for a way for the user to have a custom CSS file? I really like how Atom provides such great visual customization by just giving the user a less file that they can edit.
Neither did I. When I first opened VSCode, I thought it wanted to tell me about something important going on. Maybe color coded an update message or something like that.
Still waiting on docblock support or plugin for PHP, then I'm going to give it a shot. Till then I'll stick w/ sublime.
Though I've been trying vim again, maybe I'll finally jump into it.. I mean I jumped into Arch linux + i3wm(tiled window manager), moving into the console for everything seems next logical transition toward becoming part computer.
is that a knock on php? it gets the job done, I also am working on some phoenix side projects, but Laravel is my main bread and butter currently and what I excel at. Would love to do more/become better at using elixir/haskell in some future apps, but I only see them really mattering when I need lots of concurrency.
Makes me happy that getting rid of stack ranking allows small elite teams to now be functional.
Before, everyone would've been stepping on each others' toes because only two out of ten people would always be rated top performers and two more would be forced onto "performance improvement plans" (aka "you're about to get fired").
"co-author of the influential software engineering textbook, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. He co-wrote the JUnit software testing framework with Kent Beck and led the design of the Eclipse platform's Java Development Tools (JDT)"
And here's me writing code that creates csv files, that get copied from one server to another server (on another continent) - without anyone reading them.
It depends on what you need. The new built-in path intellisense only applies to JavaScript and TypeScript files for require or import statements. The path intellisense extension specifically is much more general and offers additional functionality that you may find helpful.
I work on the VSCode team on JS and TS support, so please let us know if you run into any problems with the new path intellisense feature or have ideas on how it could be improved.
The Just my Code debugger support, where stepping through callbacks can just skip all the in-between functions handled by third party libs looks fantastic.
Especially with await / yield-promise type stuff, I could imagine this will make debugging much nicer.
Is there anyway to get user-defined macros? Sublime and JEdit handle them well and was wondering if there is something coming or a preferred extension?
I'm an Emacs user, so that's what I've written most of my Rust in, but I tried out VSCode and setting up all of the Rust integration, and it was pretty easy to set up and seemed to work pretty well playing with it briefly. Didn't seem to be worth switching from Emacs for, but I was fairly impressed, and will likely recommend VSCode for anyone looking for a Rust IDE who doesn't already have a strongly preferred editor or IDE.
I have been but I don't put much stress of the fancier features of the IDE, mostly I just use it as a tabbed text editor with syntax highlighting and git support.
Racer (intelligent auto complete) has always been a bit flaky, but other than that it's been great.
It's decent, but far from perfect. Working are: Intellisense, go to definition, some type information on hover.
Sometimes, however, autocomplete doesn't work. (If the file is too big, or if you use macros, both of which are very common in rust.) I found the type info tooltips to not be super precise. There's no live error checking, or at least I couldn't get it to work. I also couldn't get auto formatting to work, but I didn't try much. (Since I can just do it from the command line, anyway)
I wish it had more documentation-related features.
Haven't really tried debugging yet, but should work fine. (I believe it uses GDB)
Why are people using this instead of WebStorm? It seems like:
- It a little faster for Typescript (but no better TS features from what I can see).
- A lot of people are trying it because it's new, or because they like MS tools.
- It's free
On the other hand WebStorm still has more functionality overall, a few less rough edges, and a more standard UI (some people don't like how MS Code doesn't have a tabbed doc UI).
My personal calculus is that WebStorm is so cheap, I would not allow my primary tool to be even 1% worse to save money. Also I like those crazy guys - they have been pushing out features very fast for years now.
I would personally never use an IDE for any of my (non-mobile) development. No way no how. That makes things like WebStorm or whatever DOA for me personally.
My best guess for your downvotes is that your comment isn't only nonsense and inaccurate, but also pretty churlish.
Cut it out with the "shill" accusations. Unless you have proof that somebody is astroturfing, it's a lazy accusation that is quickly becoming meaningless.
> some people don't like how MS Code doesn't have a tabbed doc UI
VS Code has had tabs for over half a year now, since the 1.3 release in June. Beforehand, the "active documents" acted more or less as nerfed tabs, but I agree the real tab support was desperately needed before 1.3.
> they have been pushing out features very fast for years now.
WebStorm gets major updates 2-3 times a year, VS Code gets major updates 12 times a year. I'm pretty sure you can't really call WebStorm "very fast" on that front given that metric.
I've never used WebStorm so I can't really comment on the other points, but you're also being very vague. What are some examples of more functionality and less rough edges?
I upvoted your comment because your points are accurate (I have both WebStorm and Visual Studio Code open all day every day for my current project) and informative, but mostly because what the fuck are adiranlmm and plexicle going on about.
From my experience, I would just add that while WebStorm is indeed far more powerful in terms of features that it has, it:
- is actually slower even than VS Code for many operations (both of which are, when compared to a native editor like Sublime or TextMate 2, objectively slowww at basic operations like launching and opening windows)
- it comes with a shopsack full of shit enabled by default, that most people will need to scale back, adjust, or turn off before getting productive. E.g., on the Mac, all the text editing keyboard shortcuts are wrong, drag and drop doesn't work like any other app, some windows can only be docked or floating windows (wtf!) and can't be put in the background, and all sorts of spurious code-linting and annoying popup suggestions are enabled by default. It's the UI equivalent of somebody shouting all sorts of commands and suggestions at you, while when you first open VSCode its a fairly minimal rectangle of text that you can work with right away and gradually learn the advanced features when you are ready to.
So one answer to "why people use this instead of WebStorm" is probably that, especially on Mac, many people's first response to WebStorm is to groan "bleeeccch! yuck!" and close the window and drag the app to the trash.
(I did that a few times, too, but in the end the WebStorm the code completion and intelligent navigation was so much better than anything else that I decided to endure the UI atrocities and stick with it.)
I recently switched from PHPStorm (which I already buy license for) to VS Code, and for me the main problem was Java engine on Windows which PHPStorm runs on. I just didn't have a luck to make it work smooth enough, while my computer is quite strong in and of itself. Those occasional hiccups when the editor or whole IDE just frozen for a few seconds driven me crazy sometimes.
So for me, VS Code is a lot faster, not just a little bit. Also command invocation is faster via F1 key.
Apart from that, VS Code just feel a bit more "modern", for example in the areas:
- git integration is more straightforward, or "just better".
- settings are also better organized, no more browsing various dialogs, everything is in one json file.
Make sure to run PHPStorm with 64-bit Java on Windows if you are on 64-bit platform. Much better experience.
PHPStorm on Windows ships with 32-bit Java. You have to install 64-bit Java yourself and change your Windows shortcut to point to the 64-bit PHPStorm exe. It also has it own vmoptions file.
If you install Jetbrains Toolbox App you can tell that run 64-bit for you and also set java heap size.
I would rather beg MS to write many of the popular plugins.
These free editors with flexible plugin system is only good if the plugins' quality stay above average.
Stuff like Atom, I dig a dozen plugins only to keep 3 or so in the end, because they're written by random people with random quality, which is not much of use.
Not saying Electron is the pinnacle of performance, but IntelliJ and the whole Java Swing stack is just abysmal in my experience. I much prefer VS Code, it feels way 'snappier'.
WebStorm has both Intellisense-like autocomplete and word completion. Its "Jump to definition" helped me become a better programmer because jumping into library code became a habit - be it Ruby or Javascript (I use RubyMine). They were one of the first editors to fully support JSX, and before that they came first in supporting Angular v1 and its directives. They let you refactor code in dynamic languages, does it silently and safely when the scope is clear, and asks you when not.
When I had to work on a Java project, using IntelliJ was a dream. The same environment, but with sturdier refactoring. Plus it taught me Java idioms by whispering gentle suggestions while programming.
In Rails, when you rename your controller it renames your routes. It has a great debugger integrated that just works. It has support for your rake tasks, at par with the deep integration into all environments it support.
When they changed their subscription model to an yearly fee, I was happy to be giving more money from my limited paycheck to this company. It is the kind of software I'd write love letters to. I make tools for developers, and one day I want them to be of the calibre of JetBrains' products.
Because competition is healthy and without it you'd be wishing there was an alternative to WebStorm.
Also because some of us don't like WebStorm. My experience with it has been very poor. I actually bought a license and invested time in trying to "like" it, but for my use case it was not quite there. E.g. I write a lot of Flow/TypeScript and it has always lagged behind or required me to use bleeding edge versions which were a) free anyway, so my license was unnecessary for that time span, and b) very buggy, which defeats the purpose. For vanilla JavaScript, it has the best autocompletion out there, but when you're using TypeScript or Flow there's just no advantage since practically any decent editor will give you the expected suggestions.
Boot up times are important for me because sometimes I'm in the terminal and I want to open a file, work with it, then quit (`cmd+q` or `:q`) when I'm done. WebStorm is not my friend in those cases. Vim is. Surprisingly VSCode is as well.
In WebStorm's defence, I believe the Vim plugin is one of the best out there (perhaps just second to Emacs evil mode). Other than that and its JavaScript IntelliSense... I can't really think of any other advantages. I hear some of my colleagues talk about git diffing / merge views, but to be honest I already have tools for that and I never do any git stuff in my editor unless it's Emacs + magit.
Refactoring JavaScript code might be neat with WebStorm as well but I haven't used it enough to have an opinion on it. I don't know how well it performs with TypeScript / Flow / Elm codebases but I'd be interested to see it in action, since those seem to be easier targets for refactoring than JavaScript.
There is an issue though that I find so annoying and I just hope they fix it.
I set up the external terminal to git bash on windows and sometimes when I'm deleting commands with the backspace it doesn't really delete the full word, hard to explain but as an example if I type "nani" and then press backspace "nani" stays but I know it has been deleted because it kinda flicks so I type "o" now I have in the terminal "nanio" and sure enough if I now type the name of the file it edits it.
Hope this makes sense, I put up with it because I'm really enjoying the product and the speed of development.
I recently moved from EMACS (after using it for ~10 years & ~6 languages) to VSCode. There are loads of things that I miss but overall it's been a fairly smooth transition.
I'm moving because I spend most of my time writing javascript and felt that no combination of emacs modes allowed me to keep up with a proper IDE. Emacs is a tool to learn once and use for a lifetime (and I will continue to use it for other editing tasks) but I found that I was increasingly having to learn outside tools in order to gain the benefit that IDEs could hand me for "free" (free like a puppy, retraining your fingers takes months).
Things I love:
- Intellisense is immediately superior to anything I've used in EMACS.
- Debugging from my editor. This was available in emacs for C, PHP & Java using GDB or similar but it never made it's way to javascript as far as I can tell.
- Goto definition.
- Good typescript and Flow integration
Things I miss:
- IDO Mode (FML I hate Finder for moving through directories)
- Creating files with just the keyboard (probably possible but I haven't figured it out yet).
- Kill ring
- Moving around the code with just a keyboard (ctrl-v and the sort).
- Non-intellisense completion. When your caret is at the end of a word, Command-\ in EMACS completes to another word from the same buffer that has the same prefix and continue to swap through words on subsequent presses. Very useful in a dynamic language.
I tried Flow but ended up using Typescript for my current project. If I were to go hard on Flow I'd probably be using Atom with Nuclide instead of VSCode.
I actually like Flow slightly better but the community created type libs for TypeScript convinced me to go that direction.
Do you use any extension to use emacs keybindings? I've tried out VS Code a couple of times and wasn't able to find an extension for emacs keybindings that had everything I use in it. When I tried out Atom, one of the packages for this worked fairly well (although I have other issues that prevent me from using Atom as my full-time editor)
I didn't know this! I just created a few keyboard shortcuts that I commonly use manually. Not perfect but it's gotten me over the hump. I may check out the emacs bindings on a slow day.
Oh, not sure how I missed this! I'll have to try it out
EDIT: On trying it out, it seems to have reasonable support for most of the editing functionality, but the shortcuts for handling split buffers (C-x 0, C-x 1, C-x o, etc.) is completely non-existent. I'm unsure right now whether I'd be able to define them on mine own or whether I'd be willing to stick with it if I couldn't.
It turns out the changes were pretty trivial (partially due to vscode apparently not allowing vertical split), so I just put them in my keybindings.json.
The command palette seems like the sort of thing that'll have more power than I'm currently giving it credit for. How do you create a file outside of the directory that you're currently editing?
I'm aware. If you follow the thread, we're talking specifically about creating a new file using the command pallet. Also, I mentioned above that, while I'm aware of the ability to create a file using finder, I'd rather not.
It does for languages where you can find a mode that supports it. I never found one for Javascript. Honestly though, while I like the feature, I never notice that it's not there when I'm using Emacs. I can get around in a JS code base.
The only environment that I've been in where it was critical was large Java projects. I would have been lost without being able to goto def though maven dependencies. Having to read XML to figure out where stuff is would have driven me insane.
For the IDO part: If you open a folder in VS Code, then you can use Ctrl+P or Ctrl+T (I keep forgetting which), and that allows you to type part of the file name, and then it will find it. The best is, it searches the entire subtree of the folder you opened.
As a long-time emacs user, I have recently taken a look at VSCode, and while I am not ditching emacs anytime soon, the experience was a lot more pleasant than I would have expected. I plan to use it for some toy project over the holidays, see how that works out.
> Moving around the code with just a keyboard (ctrl-v and the sort).
That is something I have missed in pretty much every IDE I have ever used, except OpenWatcom's, which allows to use vi-keybindings. (Okay, so Eclipse supports Emacs-ish keybindings, too, but it felt really weird using those.)
I think, there is a plugin/package for VSCode that implements emacs-style keybindings, but I could not get it to work properly. :-(
196 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 248 ms ] threadNow I only hope they add in hot-disk support.
Sublime Text 3 checks to see if the currently opened version differs from the file system. If it does, it prompts the user to keep the current version or replace it with the disk version. VS Code just replaces the current version with the disk version and doesn't retain history so you can't undo this.
I lost about an hour of work yesterday because I had a file open in both VS Code and Sublime Text. Pressing save in Sublime Text wiped out all changes. :(
VScode and Atom are constantly receiving new features. So we can say that they are still in beta too.
Beta is just a word.
BTW, really awesome job VSCode team :) I love what you're doing!
(I use it to edit a very large JSON test fixture file)
Also, I did not know how much I needed Zen mode in my life.
One common need that is a sad state of affairs in the Node world is performance tooling. It's available and competent professionals should invest in it once it becomes necessary but is a pain in the ass to setup and run.
Some of the best programmers advocate for printf over debuggers...
And some of the crappiest programmers run around the debugger for hours with no idea what could be wrong in the program, stepping blindly here and there...
And, come to think of it, with hot code reloading, printf can be just as immediate, but more direct and focused, than using the debugger. Shame that few languages/environments offer hot code reloading...
Debuggers are a valuable tool that nowadays should be standard.
Just because someone advocates taking a step back in some particular issue (and for specific reasons they argue about) doesn't mean it logically follows that they advocate going all the way back.
Two things: "slippery slope" fallacy and "marginal returns".
I'm pretty sure we can find some ways in which you yourself advocates NOT using some modern language feature in favor of an older practice (e.g. you might be against visual programming languages). Does that mean you are ultimately in the same "punch cars" camp as you suggest I am?
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTDXvmarLFnox4AO0w2NuiQ
Yes, js devs use debuggers and have for years. Firebug was created and popularized for browser js 10 years ago[1]. Node.js was released 7 years ago, got a debug option one year later using node debugger. It was CLI based and a bit shit. Tools which leveraged Node's debug protocol and Chrome's developer tools (node-inspector) for example were started 5 years ago[2]. Most recently some group associated (maybe on?) the Chrome team started creating a cleaner debug protocol and integrating directly with the Chromium project[3]. That's become the gold standard and is the standard way of debugging for Node 7+[4]. VSCode uses that protocol to offer debugging directly from the editor.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebug_(software)
2. https://github.com/node-inspector/node-inspector
3. https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/9028
4. https://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html
Maybe there was some way I didn't know about. There's the 'inspect' flag in node 6 now that prints out a link you can copy into your chrome browser to debug server node code.
Firebug quickly became the defacto later on. But telling your average web designer about breakpoints, stepping over and stepping into would cause their eyes to glaze over.
Anyway I like how low-memory-on-the-disk and low RAM usage VScode is, so I probably wouldn't enjoy intelliJ and webstorm for those reasons. I felt like even sublime was too bulky for me. Maybe they're good for other people and that's fine, but vscode just ticks all the right boxes.
Once you figure that if anything makes your days better by spending $10 or so a month, not choosing the best tool for the job sounds simply dumb.
I have a friend who sticks with plain vim uncustomized because he doesn't want to deviate from the default in fear of not being able to seamlessly use other environment sounds utterly stupid wasting productivity for 99% of the time being on his own machine.
I am very fortunate in my means right now, but I come from a poor family, and spending money is emotionally trying for me. I gain pleasure from pushing my monthly expenses down as tight as I can. It seems melodramatic but paying for webstorm might just stress me out - I'd constantly feel a need to justify it, like when I tried subbing to World of Warcraft - I'd catch myself calculating fun per dollar. Euck.
Anyway I'm a simple front end dev so I don't think it's necessary for now. As I branch out into Python perhaps Webstorm's tools will add tremendous value, I have seen some cool stuff but I just don't need it for now.
> vue core, vue-router and vuex 2.0 all have TypeScript typings shipped in the npm packages
https://medium.com/the-vue-point/vue-2-0-is-here-ef1f26acf4b...
[0]: https://github.com/vuejs/vue-class-component
EDIT: Just saw this on twitter: https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/typescript.html
I have high hopes for a sublime-style "whole document" scroll bar in future releases.
[0] https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/4865
See link for suggestions how to mitigate. I use the tip from the person named sysrpl. VSCode is unusable with that blue color for me.
1: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1884
Sean - VS Code Team Member
So happy.
Though I've been trying vim again, maybe I'll finally jump into it.. I mean I jumped into Arch linux + i3wm(tiled window manager), moving into the console for everything seems next logical transition toward becoming part computer.
From one member: "VSCode has a relatively small team compared to the size of the product" - https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/13138#issuecommen...
Before, everyone would've been stepping on each others' toes because only two out of ten people would always be rated top performers and two more would be forced onto "performance improvement plans" (aka "you're about to get fired").
And here's me writing code that creates csv files, that get copied from one server to another server (on another continent) - without anyone reading them.
Does that mean we don't need those extensions anymore?
- Path Intellisense: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=christia...
- NPM Intellisense: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=christia...
(I have not updated yet)
I work on the VSCode team on JS and TS support, so please let us know if you run into any problems with the new path intellisense feature or have ideas on how it could be improved.
Thanks
e.g. if I start typing './c', it suggests me every symbol in the current file starting with 'c'.
I would love to have only the paths available in the project (like the "Path Intellisense" extension does).
I will post my feedback on GitHub, in case you don't see this message. :)
Especially with await / yield-promise type stuff, I could imagine this will make debugging much nicer.
[0] https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_8#_just-my-code-nod...
The vim extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevi...) also supports vim macros
https://areweideyet.com/
Going by feature set alone (plugins included) it appears like a good choice, though I've yet to try it myself.
Racer (intelligent auto complete) has always been a bit flaky, but other than that it's been great.
Sometimes, however, autocomplete doesn't work. (If the file is too big, or if you use macros, both of which are very common in rust.) I found the type info tooltips to not be super precise. There's no live error checking, or at least I couldn't get it to work. I also couldn't get auto formatting to work, but I didn't try much. (Since I can just do it from the command line, anyway)
I wish it had more documentation-related features.
Haven't really tried debugging yet, but should work fine. (I believe it uses GDB)
- It a little faster for Typescript (but no better TS features from what I can see).
- A lot of people are trying it because it's new, or because they like MS tools.
- It's free
On the other hand WebStorm still has more functionality overall, a few less rough edges, and a more standard UI (some people don't like how MS Code doesn't have a tabbed doc UI).
My personal calculus is that WebStorm is so cheap, I would not allow my primary tool to be even 1% worse to save money. Also I like those crazy guys - they have been pushing out features very fast for years now.
My best guess for your downvotes is that your comment isn't only nonsense and inaccurate, but also pretty churlish.
How is it mean spirited to post observations about something people were asking about?
And if something is incorrect why not just say what it is?
Are you accusing me of secretly living in the Czech Republic while hanging out HN to astroturf for WebStorm?
Was there a mistake in the comment?
Or, I hate to even ask, is this some sort of childish fanboy thing?
VS Code has had tabs for over half a year now, since the 1.3 release in June. Beforehand, the "active documents" acted more or less as nerfed tabs, but I agree the real tab support was desperately needed before 1.3.
> they have been pushing out features very fast for years now.
WebStorm gets major updates 2-3 times a year, VS Code gets major updates 12 times a year. I'm pretty sure you can't really call WebStorm "very fast" on that front given that metric.
I've never used WebStorm so I can't really comment on the other points, but you're also being very vague. What are some examples of more functionality and less rough edges?
From my experience, I would just add that while WebStorm is indeed far more powerful in terms of features that it has, it:
- is actually slower even than VS Code for many operations (both of which are, when compared to a native editor like Sublime or TextMate 2, objectively slowww at basic operations like launching and opening windows)
- it comes with a shopsack full of shit enabled by default, that most people will need to scale back, adjust, or turn off before getting productive. E.g., on the Mac, all the text editing keyboard shortcuts are wrong, drag and drop doesn't work like any other app, some windows can only be docked or floating windows (wtf!) and can't be put in the background, and all sorts of spurious code-linting and annoying popup suggestions are enabled by default. It's the UI equivalent of somebody shouting all sorts of commands and suggestions at you, while when you first open VSCode its a fairly minimal rectangle of text that you can work with right away and gradually learn the advanced features when you are ready to.
So one answer to "why people use this instead of WebStorm" is probably that, especially on Mac, many people's first response to WebStorm is to groan "bleeeccch! yuck!" and close the window and drag the app to the trash.
(I did that a few times, too, but in the end the WebStorm the code completion and intelligent navigation was so much better than anything else that I decided to endure the UI atrocities and stick with it.)
That "full of shit", which is useful to some, I just go to plugins and uncheck them, once.
So for me, VS Code is a lot faster, not just a little bit. Also command invocation is faster via F1 key.
Apart from that, VS Code just feel a bit more "modern", for example in the areas:
- git integration is more straightforward, or "just better".
- settings are also better organized, no more browsing various dialogs, everything is in one json file.
PHPStorm on Windows ships with 32-bit Java. You have to install 64-bit Java yourself and change your Windows shortcut to point to the 64-bit PHPStorm exe. It also has it own vmoptions file.
If you install Jetbrains Toolbox App you can tell that run 64-bit for you and also set java heap size.
Stuff like Atom, I dig a dozen plugins only to keep 3 or so in the end, because they're written by random people with random quality, which is not much of use.
When I had to work on a Java project, using IntelliJ was a dream. The same environment, but with sturdier refactoring. Plus it taught me Java idioms by whispering gentle suggestions while programming.
In Rails, when you rename your controller it renames your routes. It has a great debugger integrated that just works. It has support for your rake tasks, at par with the deep integration into all environments it support.
When they changed their subscription model to an yearly fee, I was happy to be giving more money from my limited paycheck to this company. It is the kind of software I'd write love letters to. I make tools for developers, and one day I want them to be of the calibre of JetBrains' products.
Also because some of us don't like WebStorm. My experience with it has been very poor. I actually bought a license and invested time in trying to "like" it, but for my use case it was not quite there. E.g. I write a lot of Flow/TypeScript and it has always lagged behind or required me to use bleeding edge versions which were a) free anyway, so my license was unnecessary for that time span, and b) very buggy, which defeats the purpose. For vanilla JavaScript, it has the best autocompletion out there, but when you're using TypeScript or Flow there's just no advantage since practically any decent editor will give you the expected suggestions.
Boot up times are important for me because sometimes I'm in the terminal and I want to open a file, work with it, then quit (`cmd+q` or `:q`) when I'm done. WebStorm is not my friend in those cases. Vim is. Surprisingly VSCode is as well.
In WebStorm's defence, I believe the Vim plugin is one of the best out there (perhaps just second to Emacs evil mode). Other than that and its JavaScript IntelliSense... I can't really think of any other advantages. I hear some of my colleagues talk about git diffing / merge views, but to be honest I already have tools for that and I never do any git stuff in my editor unless it's Emacs + magit.
Refactoring JavaScript code might be neat with WebStorm as well but I haven't used it enough to have an opinion on it. I don't know how well it performs with TypeScript / Flow / Elm codebases but I'd be interested to see it in action, since those seem to be easier targets for refactoring than JavaScript.
There is an issue though that I find so annoying and I just hope they fix it.
I set up the external terminal to git bash on windows and sometimes when I'm deleting commands with the backspace it doesn't really delete the full word, hard to explain but as an example if I type "nani" and then press backspace "nani" stays but I know it has been deleted because it kinda flicks so I type "o" now I have in the terminal "nanio" and sure enough if I now type the name of the file it edits it.
Hope this makes sense, I put up with it because I'm really enjoying the product and the speed of development.
Big congratulations to the team.
You guys are fantastic
I'm moving because I spend most of my time writing javascript and felt that no combination of emacs modes allowed me to keep up with a proper IDE. Emacs is a tool to learn once and use for a lifetime (and I will continue to use it for other editing tasks) but I found that I was increasingly having to learn outside tools in order to gain the benefit that IDEs could hand me for "free" (free like a puppy, retraining your fingers takes months).
Things I love:
- Intellisense is immediately superior to anything I've used in EMACS.
- Debugging from my editor. This was available in emacs for C, PHP & Java using GDB or similar but it never made it's way to javascript as far as I can tell.
- Goto definition.
- Good typescript and Flow integration
Things I miss:
- IDO Mode (FML I hate Finder for moving through directories)
- Creating files with just the keyboard (probably possible but I haven't figured it out yet).
- Kill ring
- Moving around the code with just a keyboard (ctrl-v and the sort).
- Non-intellisense completion. When your caret is at the end of a word, Command-\ in EMACS completes to another word from the same buffer that has the same prefix and continue to swap through words on subsequent presses. Very useful in a dynamic language.
There is a bunch of annoying bugs waiting to be fixed, e.g. the one about the imported types [1].
In the other hand, I don't blame the maintainers. The Flow team is a really small team and the VSCode extension is obviously not the priority. :)
If you guys see this message, thanks for the amazing work on Flow!
[1]: https://github.com/flowtype/flow-for-vscode/issues/23
I actually like Flow slightly better but the community created type libs for TypeScript convinced me to go that direction.
By the way, the Flow extension for VSCode is a port of Nuclide, so it's almost the same end result I guess.
EDIT: On trying it out, it seems to have reasonable support for most of the editing functionality, but the shortcuts for handling split buffers (C-x 0, C-x 1, C-x o, etc.) is completely non-existent. I'm unsure right now whether I'd be able to define them on mine own or whether I'd be willing to stick with it if I couldn't.
For anyone interested: https://gist.github.com/saghm/6f97aea92029fec62067e658c6f02f...
For completion: Ctrl-space will force a completion at your current location.
[1] https://github.com/dkundel/vscode-new-file
For JS maybe. Irony with irony-clang is the best C++ autocomplete I've found. VSCode's C++ Intellisense is crap.
The only environment that I've been in where it was critical was large Java projects. I would have been lost without being able to goto def though maven dependencies. Having to read XML to figure out where stuff is would have driven me insane.
> Moving around the code with just a keyboard (ctrl-v and the sort).
That is something I have missed in pretty much every IDE I have ever used, except OpenWatcom's, which allows to use vi-keybindings. (Okay, so Eclipse supports Emacs-ish keybindings, too, but it felt really weird using those.)
I think, there is a plugin/package for VSCode that implements emacs-style keybindings, but I could not get it to work properly. :-(