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Comment by tomdale | Hacker News Reader

I have been using VS Code as my full-time editor for a few months now and couldn't be happier. Originally I was only using it for TypeScript projects, where the language integration is top-notch, but eventually found myself using it all the time. I use the vim plugin, which is surprisingly good although it does have a few issues still.

The best thing about VS Code (and Microsoft's other big open source project, TypeScript) is the steady stream of releases. Because of the regular release cadence, small but important improvements never get blocked by some big feature that took longer than anticipated. As much as I wouldn't have believed this 10 years ago, Microsoft does open source better than almost everyone.

VS Code: developed on GitHub, written in TypeScript, great extension API, clear roadmap and regular releases. I am a very happy user.

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I'm currently switching from gvim to vscode and back again every five minutes, in order to use vscode's debugger --- it's gdb integration is the best I've seen bar none [1][2]. If the vim emulation was good enough, I'd switch in a moment. Which, unfortunately, it's not, for me: the biggest omission is shift-Y/shift-P for yank and paste, which I use constantly, but there's holes everywhere.

(Also, the way the vscode's autopopup thingy grabs the escape key is really annoying, but I'm sure that's configurable.)

Two minor nitpicks:

[1] I haven't figured out how to make the debugger show a pointer as an array yet.

[2] I used to use ddd. By modern standards it's pretty rough, but it's data visualiser was unparalleled brilliance. (It allowed you to lay out structures on a canvas as boxes with arrows representing pointers.) I'd love to see that in vscode.

Hi! I'm one of the core developers of VSCodeVim. Shift-Y and Shift-P absolutely work for me, so please report on our issues page if they continue to not work for you: https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues

I would also be really interested to hear about the other holes that you're running into. Always trying to make a better Vim experience for you :)

I don't wish to derail the thread, but while I have your ear: is there any hope for using the neovim over its msgpack interface instead of implementing vim bindings from scratch?

That's a really interesting idea, but it would definitely be a different project than our Vim extension.

Whoa. Never even thought about this, but it would be completely awesome.

Speaking of Neovim, it sure would be nice to have a special mode specifically for yielding to an IDE so that all of the IDE's default keybindings can remain intact.

I just wanted to say thanks.

A Vim with intellisense that I can step through with the debugger. I've been waiting 15 years for this.

jaredpar's VsVim will give you that in Visual Studio.

True, but VS is not open source and doesn't run on Linux.

I was actually the one who submitted the feature request which you closed --- I'll reopen this. Thanks!

Update: no, I can't reopen it, so I'll open a new bug.

...aaaand they've fixed it and pushed out a new release. Thanks very much!

Hi John,

I've spoken with a few of the devs in our team having trouble with VS 2015 update 3 crashing. They'd love to switch to VSCode but ask:

1. When is there going to be decent C#/razor-intellisense, a razor generator ?

2. Will there be TFS integration (not git)?

I'm just the developer of VSCodeVim. I don't work on VSCode at all outside of that, so unfortunately I can't help you there. :)

Ok, if you can't relay it internally where is best to ask?

Probably the VSCode GitHub page has some links! I'm not affiliated with MS in any way. :)

Oh I see, my misunderstanding, thanks.

Just installed VS Code with the Vim extension and everything seems to be working pretty well for me, including yy and shift-P. I had to set "vim.useCtrlKeys": true to enable some of the keybinds that override VS Code bindings.

Yeah that's a good setting.

The parent is correct though, Y doesn't work. I thought it did, so I opened it up to check, and turns out that I didn't realize this because I tend to do Vy instead of Y.

Hi! I'm one of the core developers of VSCodeVim. Shift-Y works for me, so if you can't get it to work for some reason, could you report that here?: https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues

If you have any other problems, please let me know. :)

Will do, and thanks for your work here. I have always wanted to try more editors, but vim plugins are (almost notoriously) full of holes, so there's always _something_ someone uses that's broken. Yours is the best I've ever come across. Seriously, thanks. Oh, and that reply to me down-thread from Tom is really heartening as well, kudos.

(I swung by the slack and mentioned the other issue I had, and have meant to open a bug about it too, I'll get on that.)

Thanks :)

Curious, which of the five-or-so Vim extensions are you using?

I've heard there's a bit of drama in which the top-downloaded Vim extension is poorly implemented and poorly supported by the dev, and that some of the lesser-known Vim extensions are far better.

Hi! I'm one of the core developers of VSCodeVim. I think what you've heard is pretty out-of-date - we've been crazy active over the last couple of months. You can check our github page to confirm, if you want - https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim :)

Let me know what you think if you do try to use it.

Damn, seriously? I'm going to be writing some C++ soon, and I'm also planning to learn gdb, so I guess VS Code it is then. Thanks for the heads up!

VSCode's C++ plugin supports both gdb and lldb (at least on macOS). As for what to learn--I'd learn GDB. Pretty much every architecture on the planet has a GDB port.

Yeah GDB it is. The C++ plugin is excellent from what I've seen and the debugging UI is very pleasant to work with.

There's also a brand-new lldb plugin too https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vadimcn....

Which would you recommend I start with as a newcomer to the low-level debugging world - gdb or lldb? I have some experience debugging assembly in x86 real mode (yep, my class was outdated!).

> I have some experience debugging assembly in x86 real mode (yep, my class was outdated!).

Are you kidding that is an awesome skill to have. Everyone "should" learn assembly and write a small program once.

I personally don't have enough direct experience with lldb to say. I've heard good things. It's on my list of stuff to try out.

I have little experience with both, but the developers of LLDB have a goal of making more informative error messages. This was successful enough that GDB devs were compelled to mimic this behavior, making their error reporting more accessible. As far as I know, LLDB still has the advantage in this regard.

You must be confusing LLDB/GDB with Clang/GCC. LLDB and GDB are debuggers, they generally do not produce many error messages. Clang has/had better error messages than GCC.

You are right; I stand corrected.

What do shift+Y and shift+P do? Are they the same as y and p, but in insert mode?

    :h Y

    ["x]Y                   yank [count] lines [into register x] (synonym for
                            yy, |linewise|).


    :h P

    ["x]P                   Put the text [from register x] before the cursor
                            [count] times.  {Vi: no count}

In insert mode? How would you type uppercase X and P then?

charmap.exe

The VS 15 Community debugging feature is incredible as well.

"As much as I wouldn't have believed this 10 years ago, Microsoft does open source better than almost everyone."

This. They are treating vscode like its a core (cash cow) product. I'd say google embraced/adopted open source early on and now microsoft is playing catchup while now becoming one of the very best to do it.

I see Microsoft's open source efforts as a means to an end.

Name one entity whose open source efforts are not a means to an end. Even OSS nuts like Stallman have their motivations (in his case, furthering his ideology).

That doesn't invalidate their contributions.

Stallman is FOSS, not OSS.

rms "is" Free Software. FLOSS if you want to be neutral. Not FOSS:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.html

As opposed to all other companies that do open source for purely altruistic reasons?

They've been making so much progress on the vim plugin. I was recently at a conference, and was talking to someone who works on Code. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "I wanted to use Code, but the vim integration wasn't good enough."

Her: "Oh yeah? What issues did you have, specifically?"

Me: "Let me just reinstall real quick and I'll show you."

Me: "... okay yeah this just works now. Awesome."

Most "vim emulation" plugins suck, because the vim way of thinking about things is so different from the typical GUI editor. Because of this, extension APIs often have to be wildly abused just to get even moderately decent parity with vim. Bugs and inconsistencies abound and are often impossible for the plugin author to fix.

That's why it's been extremely heartening to see releases of VS Code that explicitly add extension points to enable features for the vim plugin[1]. It's not perfect now, but given that the VS Code team seems to be making it their mission to offer an extension API robust enough to make it perfect, I'm willing to deal with the quirks for now.

[1]: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_5#_extension-author...

Man oh man, as a long time Sublime user I downloaded it just out of curiosity and really not expecting to switch. Now its a few months down the line and its the only text editor I use, and once a month I see a new release at the top of HN and get excited. It is one of the few things where I actually read all the release notes. I feel like a fan boy.

Yes.

When they delayed the tabs I was a bit bummed, but then the next release with the tabs came so fast, I found it funny that they even mentioned delaying them.

I agree, and like a child comment here, used to switch back and forth between other editors(sublime, atom) and Microsofts push to win developers is working.

Huge swathes of code released, azure implementing innovative things around blockchain-- not to mention the linux offerings & other oss plugins. Even porting out powershell as well as bash integration, chakra ect.

To touch on the parebt comment, the vscode editor is one of the MS products i use most often and am most familiar with. The release cadence; compared to the very similar Atom editor, is much different in philosophy.

Atom was first(i think it even came out before vscode) to have all of the features desired in aneditor. They came at the high price of horrible petformance and a wildly unstable product.

Vscode team knew everyone wanted tabs, but they worked releasing tons of things in parrallel and rolled tabs out when they worked properly.

I wouldnt say MS has won my trust, but this product has. I trust the editor will behave as expected and continue to offer awesome plugins and a greT ecperience. I can't afford to have my editor lag snd crash, as well as overwrite or delete data.

Vscode is pretty great and has virtually everything I need with only very minor things.

It's indeed a fantastic editor. Replaced Sublime for me and I couldn't be happier.

i install every new release of vscode because i think it has the potential to become a good editor but the vim plugins are still far from good enough for me to use on a regular basis.

Hi! I'm one of the developers of VSCodeVim, and I'd really like to know about the particular pain points you're running into when you're trying to use the extension. You can tell me here or open up issues on github - https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues - whichever you prefer.

Same as Tom for both TypeScript and Go. Can't be happier (I don't use the vim plugin tho, even tho I was a vim user for many years)

Is this like an advertisement? If not you should definitely looking into a possible side career writing advertising copy for developers.

Just to clarify this. I really meant this in a positive way. It made me think about giving it a try which is kind of insane since I'm a very very devoted (n)vi[m] user.

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