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Comment by thebeardedone | Hacker News Reader

Hmm I have been googling for the last 15 minutes to find the difference between visual studio and visual studio code and cant seem to find a concrete answer. I thought yours was actually a hint at what it is aimed for but when you go to:

http://code.visualstudio.com/

it actually says it supports c++,c#... I still dont get what the difference is..

Having only ever developed on linux I am actually slightly excited to use an IDE like visual studio after seeing some people at work use it..

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Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac are IDEs written in C# and they support C#, C++, VB.Net and many other languages.

Visual Studio Code is a text editor built in TypeScript and based on Electron. It supports a broad range of languages, but it's an advanced text editor, not a full fledged IDE

Visual Studio Code is more like a fancy text editor rather an a full IDE. It's more like Sublime Text or (technically) Atom, rather than an IDE like Visual Studio for Windows or XCode.

You do know the difference between a text editor and an IDE? That's the difference between VS Code and VS.

Do YOU know the difference? Would it hurt to be more concrete? I'm going to venture a guess based on my assumptions, which are probably wrong, but then we can at least start a discussion:

-VS Code doesn't support solution-wide refactoring like renaming classes or moving a method from one class to another

-VS Code doesn't support runtime debugging (breakpoints)

-VS Code doesn't have a visual editor

-VS Code doesn't have memory or performance profiling tools

-VS Code doesn't have source control integration

-VS Code doesn't have an integrated build tool (MSBuild)

-VS Code doesn't have NPM or Nuget integration

VS Code supports runtime debugging.

VS Code supports GIT integration

Disclaimer: I'm not using the C# extension

> VS Code doesn't support solution-wide refactoring like renaming classes or moving a method from one class to another

F2 "Rename Symbol" (works on Go with gorename). Can't imagine using Roslyn doesn't (or won't soon enough) allow the same. From the readme:

Great C# editing support, including Syntax Highlighting, IntelliSense, Go to Definition, Find All References, etc.

> VS Code doesn't support runtime debugging (breakpoints)

It does. CMD+Shift+D goes to the Debug sidebar. CMD+Shift+P Debug shows a bunch of commands. From the readme:

Debugging support for .NET Core (CoreCLR). NOTE: Mono and Desktop CLR debugging is not supported.

> VS Code doesn't have source control integration

CMD+Shift+P git whatevs is used daily here as well as Ctrl+Shift+G for the git sidebar that can show (editable) diffs. Both the gutter and scroll bar are annotated with git info.

> VS Code doesn't have an integrated build tool (MSBuild)

MSBuild comes with .Net Core and is (probably) invoked with the language-agnostic CMD+Shift+B (run build task). C# ext may have more.

> VS Code doesn't have NPM or Nuget integration

There are both NPM and NuGet extensions available.

Now of course if what you want is all of this nicely packaged and wrapped in a GUI, well, obviously VS Code is not an IDE (as VS is) but that's precisely its value proposition.

>Obviously VS Code is not an IDE (as VS is)

OBVIOUSLY? :D VS Code starts looking more and more like an IDE to me :-) Still looking forward to hear what people define as an IDE!

Thank you for your detailed response by the way, not picking on your post, just curious what everybody finds so "unIDEish" about VS Code.

I stands for "Integrated" in IDE. Project generation, code inspection, source control, database access, refactoring, debugging, test running, etc are integrated.

Visual Studio Code generates project via third party tool - dotnet new. Refactoring, code completion is done via third party tool - Roslyn (?). Etc. It's an editor with plugins. Unlike Visual Studio or Jetbrains Rider.

So Eclipse isn't an IDE either because all functionality is in individual plugins?

Eclipse always been resource hungry sublime text java clone.

Are you saying Sublime Text existed prior to Eclipse?

It would not hurt, but it would be an arduous and unnecessary task. Most people know the difference, and if you do not, you can read the Wikipedia article on IDE. There is no need to have a discussion on the differences, it is not remotely interesting or fruitful.

I guess what annoyed me was that after thebeardedone said he'd googled for 15 minutes trying to figure out the difference between VS Code and VS, 4 answers to his post gave absolutely no clarification as to what the differences were, including yours. If you look up the definition of an IDE on Wikipedia, VS Code falls into that category.

>"it actually says it supports c++,c#... I still dont get what the difference is.."

The GP was looking at the languages the tools were written in, not the languages they support.

For what it's worth, I believe 'TypeScript + Electron' would be a closer description of what VSC was based on.

Visual Studio Code is less than a full featured IDE, and more of a very advanced code editor with told integration... The ui is much more minimalist in VS Code than full VS, Eclipse etc.

It's not that it doesn't do the job, it's just a different workflow.

As it stands, VS Code is probably the best tool for JS/Node projects or today imho. And from what I've seen, one of the better options with plugins for go and rust.

It's also available for Windows, Mac and Linux... Much faster/lighter than others, including Atim.

I'm a fan of code, but no ties to ms...

Lot of overlap, but VS Code has a much bigger ecosystem/community. Xamarin/Visual Studio has advanced debugging features like thread inspection, "immediate" console for executing commands while the program execution is paused, profiler, App Store submission, and stuff like T4 templates, etc.

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