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Comment by was_boring | Hacker News Reader

I've been using VSC as my daily driver for a few months now and it's great -- even on nightly builds. The most powerful features is the tasks.json. Once I learned to use it (the docs aren't good on it), I was able to utilize it to bring a more cohesive experience across many code bases.

I enjoy the fact that it gives an integrated experience and allows community extensions. This is a big change from atom where everything must be cobbled together, hope that it works and will break. My hope is that the MS team will pitch in on the most popular extensions per language and take them to the next level as well.

To top it off, it's one of the most open development processes I've ever seen. They have a clearly defined roadmap, release schedule and even tell you exactly how they work in the wiki (https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/wiki). It's fantastic to see such a large company open up like this.

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On Windows I still prefer the full VS but on OS X Code is great.

Full VS is a lot lighter than it used to be. There is a preview of 15 (confusingly, the next version after 2015) available now.

"Visual Studio “15” Preview 3 (which is different from Visual Studio 2015 Update 3)" - naming is hard.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2016/07/07/vis...

Me too. I was a bit skeptic at first. Been a long time vim user but wanted to try something new. I now use it to code Python (I write a lot of it). It works very nicely. So much that I'm in the process of making it the official company -wide text editor for python at work.

I'm curious, what's the thought behind having an official company-wide text editor? The companies I've worked for usually take the route of "leave their choice in tools up to them", which I appreciate.

I never got this either especially when editorconfig exists.

I can understand it, if it's not too draconian. It's nice for some central power to have coherent walktnroughs on how to set up an editor to lint, etc. If another dev wants to use a different editor and can make it work, it's fine by me, but I can't see anyone "supporting" every editor out there.

We needed a good standard setup that fit our needs. People can opt to use something else as long as their code meets the style guidelines. But its easier to use the same tool. We share tips and tricks a lot. That way we improve our workflow as a whole.

Why not vim itself? We tried it. They are more used to GUI centric editors. (shrugs)

While I agree with what you are saying, editor config is a good tool to enforce coding standards across multiple editors (as a bonus it already supports VS Code)

http://editorconfig.org/

Thanks for the link. I will check it out.

As long as it is implemented as a reference standard and not enforced, I think it is a good idea. The official tools are built into the standard PC build that new starters get, and inexperienced new starts would be expected to use it as company documentation will be optimised for the "company standard" tools. Experienced workers should be free to use what-ever they like as long as their output is 100% compatible with the company standard (so doesn't pose any collaboration difficulties).

As part of the Visual Studio Code effort, the .net intellisense was split into a stand lone server to be used from any editor. So I'm going the opposite way, hoping to do more and more in vim and less in VS.

Do you have more details on this? I'd love to be able to use the .NET intellisense in something other than Visual Studio. Thanks!

http://www.omnisharp.net

Omnisharp existed as a community project well before VS Code. It's great to see MS adopt and build on it.

What's the rationale behind forcing people to use an editor (especially a specific editor for a single language)?

They can use anything as Long as the code meets the requirements. But having one official tool makes it easy to work together (in our case).

To get stubborn people to try new tools for a change.

Of course their goal is conformity, easier management (e.g. everybody gets the same linters, code formatters, etc), but the above is a nice side benefit too.

There are tons of people using some antiquated editor and swearing by it, that get amazed when they are forced (by a job) to use a modern IDE and see what it can do for them.

And I'm not talking about Emacs etc -- which can do a lot if you set it up right, I talk about people coding e.g. Java with Slickedit or whatever. Heck even Vim users are sometimes surprised of the convenience (and turn-key use) of embedded debugger, build system, actual AST-based auto-completion, refactoring tools, etc.

Because when we code, actually editing text is the least of our worries, and yet this is what most simple "programming editors" focus on -- it's not like we're building huge ASCII art paintings...

How did you manage to leave vim keys so easily?

I still usa vim a lot, too.

There's a vim key extension that's pretty good too.

I tried it for python but the pip panel almost immediately soured me on it. Whenever I tried typing something in it, it would lock up the whole program for minutes at a time - absolutely atrocious.

I use the regular command line. The VSC terminal is currently not that good.

Out of curiosity, how did you get it working for Python?

Last time I checked, there's no official Python support. There are some unofficial plugins, but none of them have true Intellisense support for Python. (e.g. a la Pycharm, or even Visual Studio Tools for Python).

I know they mentioned they were working in it a few months ago on a HN thread, but I haven't heard anything about it since.

There is a doc page describing the features supported by popular extensions. https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/python

Lots of usage out of the top extension. Not quite to PyCharm level, but getting there.

Would you expand on tasks.json? Where would I learn more besides docs, are there any specific source files? Does it support passing variables like the current file? Would you mind sharing your tasks.json?

Edit: it looks like an issue about tasks.json presents some good examples: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/981

Edit2: and here's the information about variables: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/tasks#_variable-su...

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/tasks

What are some of the custom tasks you've been using in it? I've found I'm using the integrated terminal significantly more than I ever did with the tasks, but maybe I'm missing something really cool.

I work across many code bases and technology stacks so I use it to standardize tasks such as: build, test, continuous testing, running and linting. Without it I would have to remember the command for each code base.

How is that different to normal IDEs?

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