Visual Studio Code April 2017 | Hacker News Reader

Visual Studio Code April 2017

code.visualstudio.com

124 pointskwood40 comments

Since it first popped up on my radar last summer, VSCode has quickly become my favorite editor. A combination of great features that are a pain/poorly done in other editors (intellisense for many languages, a proper debugger, an integrated terminal that's just as fast as my actual terminal (I've actually gotten into the workflow of opening up huge files in vim in the integrated terminal), etc.) make VSCode amazing.

Especially when you compare the rate of improvement of VSCode to Sublime or Atom, VSCode is on an upwards track, and they've clearly captured major mindshare. (https://stackoverflow.com/insights/survey/2017#technology-mo...)

In addition, VSCodeVim is among the best in terms of vim plugins that I've used (VSVim is still better), and I thought it was amazing that Microsoft assigned an official employee to work on it.

Disclaimer: I have contributed code to the VSCodeVim extension, but that was because I liked the plugin so much (that, and there was a bug that really bothered me).

I've contributed to VSCodeVim as well (remember way back when undoing a long insert would delete each character one at a time? I fixed that!) it's actually pretty approachable and nice to contribute to.

Just a small reminder to privacy conscious people: VSCode comes with telemetry on by default[0], and you might like to turn it off. Also, the fact that you turn it off gets reported to microsoft[1] (or at least did).

[0] https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/supporting/faq#_how-to-di...

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/40451596/visual-studio-co...

This is how you write release notes. This is the only project where I routinely read the release notes "cover to cover" every month. Great job!

I agree that this is an excellent way to write release notes; The only project that does better in my opinion is Dolphin: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/

VS code is improving faster than any other IDE / programmer's editor. I wonder what sort of team size is behind it, and how long microsoft will keep funding that team on something that doesn't earn them any money. I also wonder what the end game is with respect to the regular visual studio, because as VS code picks up plugins and features it is covering more and more of the IDE feature space, and eventually the difference is going to come down to how it feels to use, not what it can do.

VS code is a snack for Linux and Mac developers. It is intended to lure those people to the Microsoft (and Azure) platform. They are able to do it so well, so quickly because Windows Visual Studio has much of that functionality already in it.

I suspect VSCode, just like NETCore will become their standard. I'm sure they have a path to switchover. They are banking on Azure now, so anything that pulls people to Azure is what they are investing in.

The biggest difference I can see between the Gates/Balmer era and the Nadella era is Gates/Balmer refused to do anything that would in any way endanger their Windows platform. This made them a ton of money for many years, but stole from their future as Linux took over the server side.

"They are able to do it so well, so quickly because Windows Visual Studio has much of that functionality already in it." I don't believe anything is shared between Visual Studio and VS Code except the branding (Microsoft playing to their traditional strengths in confusing marketing). Where I do agree is that VS Code drew on a lot of the institutional expertise and design learning from the folks who develop Visual Studio and Visual Studio Online. Perhaps also there are shared editor components across VS Code and VS Online, I'm not sure - but again this is _not_ the same editor as Visual Studio's (again with the confusing branding).

(Disclosure: I work for Microsoft, but not on VS, VS Code, VS Online or VS Floor Wax.)

I didn't mean to imply the code was the same or the editor was the same, but that the VSCode team have access to the original source code for all the compiler and intellisense algorithms that were already written, tuned and figured out.

> They are able to do it so well, so quickly because Windows Visual Studio has much of that functionality already in it.

I don't think this is true at all. I don't think VSCode has any Visual Studio code in it at all, but that's probably why they are able to be so nimble with it - no legacy cruft.

I work on VS Code. You are correct; the core VS Code editor does not share code with regular Visual Studio. However many tools and libraries are shared between the two. TypeScript and JavaScript language support for example is powered by the same TypeScript library in both VS and VS Code, and this library also is used by Atom, Sublime, and many other tools.

vscode just keeps winning. Who cares if it is written in electron (we love to hate electron). Cross Platform, 100% FREE. Open Source and so much support. Tons of good plugins already. Keep up the good work vscode team!!

I love to hate on Electron when it's used for tiny single-purpose apps. But VS Code is a large and complex project with a focus on extensibility, which I think Electron is perfect for.

It's a good example of how Electron is no excuse for sluggish apps: VSC is very snappy until you start getting really huge files. Don't blame the runtime for your crappy code!

That logic doesn't really follow. I remember reading that the VSC people put a lot of work into making sure it is still fast despite Electron.

Not everyone can do that, so it would be better if the framework was 'fast by default'.

I thought it was because VSC is using c++ binaries for stuff like intellisense

A good decision to focus on closing issues and doing more polish for the past month. The project moves fast, so taking a step back is really appreciated - before it gets out of control (as in: too buggy)

I've been running Linux as my primary desktop OS for a bit over two decades. If you told me five years ago that the majority of my daily coding would take place in an editor written by Microsoft I'd have thought you were crazy.

VS Code is an awesome editor and is improving at an equally awesome pace. Kudos to Microsoft and the team behind it.

Same here. I'm still shocked that my go-to IDE on Linux is something created by Microsoft, debugging languages they have nothing to do (Python), and distributed for free.

Great way to win back share of mind of developers.

Smart, Microsoft.

We've been using VSCode for some Go programming lately and I have to say I'm super impressed. Way faster than GogLand and I love that it is Open Source. Seriously great.

Just published VS Code 1.12.1 to fix an issue with .NET debugging: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/25918

>Search in Keyboard Shortcuts editor is improved to support all possible terms for modifier keys in corresponding platforms. meta, cmd, command, windows ctrl, control alt, option shift

Except `super` :)

VSCode is really popular! I wrote a very dumb extension for my own use and published it so I have access to it when I want it. Just checked and saw it has more than 100k downloads!

Really happy about the workbench theming. VSCode continues to put out great releases.

I tried to like Atom for a long time, but it was always just so sluggish. VSCode seems a lot faster and I keep finding my self going back and forth between it and vim.

Same here.

There is an OpenVim Plugin to CtrlP into gvim.

  :! code %

When I spawned vim first.

I love VS Code, but is anyone else getting a lot of flickering/redraws (particularly around the cursor) on OSX since the update?

Hmm, I haven't this on 10.11 or 10.12. Can you please file a bug with some screenshots/captures so that we can investigate: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/new

No problem, here ya go: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/25934

Thanks for everything you do!

I can't even get it to install on MacOS, I get an app with a crossed out circle over it and "The application can't be opened" when I double click it.

The most interesting part for me here is type checking for plain JS files. I love that they can inferred using JS Docs.

It let's me try out the benefits of type checking without having to setup TypeScript.

Anybody else experiencing problems in Safari 10.1? http://imgur.com/deflq41

Not me (on Sierra 10.12.4).

Thanks for the reply. It actually happened again on another site. Just started experiencing it there. Restarted browser. No problems. shrug Thanks again.

I love the native osx tabs for multiple windows, but I hate the color and size they are. Guess there's nothing that can be done about that though.

I wish it had the same support for PowerShell as it has for nodejs.

Won't run on MacOS Sierra

I'm running MacOS Sierra and upgraded today, no issues so far.

It's supposed to be an archive when I download it, but it's an application. When I double click it I get "The application “Visual Studio Code” can’t be opened.".

It won't open in Archive Utility because it's an app. I can run Electron from within it's package, and it opens VS Code, but that seems janky.

Reboot and it works.

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