VS Code's rise was meteoric. And I'm so glad. It's just so much simpler to have most (many/a lot/several?) developers using a single editor. A single place for plugins.
- Rock solid reliability. Never lost anything I've typed.
- Plugins galore. Install and disable rarely need an app reload. Even then, reloads are very fast.
- Startup speed is fast. Compared to any IDE, it's instant.
- UI is not overwhelming to new users. Compare to Eclipse, vim, or Eclipse.
- New files don't need a name until you want to save
- `code` is available on the command line
- Opens workspaces without any "import" or "open workspace" step
- No "10 step install wizard"
- Completely consistent across every platform
- Remote SSH editing even replaces vim in the narrow cases where I used to use it.
- Default themes are just good enough.
It's still not S-tier for refactoring (and not totally supported by my company's internal tooling that wraps everything for no reason), so I will continue to use IntelliJ for Java & Kotlin.
Not only that, the plugins _work really well_ for many mainstream and no-so-mainstream languages. (I currently work across typed FP in Scala, Typescript, Javascript, Java, Python, C++, and C, and VS Code plugins handle all of them.)
I'll also add one: the remoting feature that enables using VSCode as a Windows application connected to a WSL 2 remote is great. Both VSCode and WSL 2 are snappily responsive.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 34.6 ms ] threadThe editor itself is ok, but the strength of VS Code is the JS based plug-in ecosystem.
Vi/Emacs are all shackled by their TUI.
For me, VS Code is like Emacs with an elegant, flexible UI.
- Rock solid reliability. Never lost anything I've typed.
- Plugins galore. Install and disable rarely need an app reload. Even then, reloads are very fast.
- Startup speed is fast. Compared to any IDE, it's instant.
- UI is not overwhelming to new users. Compare to Eclipse, vim, or Eclipse.
- New files don't need a name until you want to save
- `code` is available on the command line
- Opens workspaces without any "import" or "open workspace" step
- No "10 step install wizard"
- Completely consistent across every platform
- Remote SSH editing even replaces vim in the narrow cases where I used to use it.
- Default themes are just good enough.
It's still not S-tier for refactoring (and not totally supported by my company's internal tooling that wraps everything for no reason), so I will continue to use IntelliJ for Java & Kotlin.
vim?
Not only that, the plugins _work really well_ for many mainstream and no-so-mainstream languages. (I currently work across typed FP in Scala, Typescript, Javascript, Java, Python, C++, and C, and VS Code plugins handle all of them.)
I'll also add one: the remoting feature that enables using VSCode as a Windows application connected to a WSL 2 remote is great. Both VSCode and WSL 2 are snappily responsive.