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Comment by gt_ | Hacker News Reader

Weird question, I know, because I use VS Code as well, every day for about 6 months and love it, but, I’ve never used these other popular editors. What makes VS Code so much better? I chose it because it had some integration with DCC apps I use use, and I like the GUI and general simplicity. What other reasons do people have for loving it?

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I was a long term user of Brackets (since 0.14!) before I switched to VS Code sometime in 2016 because it just worked so well with Typescript. I tried to switch to Atom several times but could never get over the slugginess of it compared to the other two editors.

There were other issues too, the way they handed project folders, intellisense for Scala, but the slugginess was the main issue. I often had to debug large JSON files and while Brackets and VS Code would open them almost immediately, Atom would take several tens of seconds.

Also, personal issue was that I didn't like the default keybindings they had for macOS. I don't remember what they are anymore but there were lots of what I thought should've been obvious defaults that weren't.

Relative to Atom, which I left for VS Code: Code is faster and lighter, just as extensible. Better git integration and code analysis, even for Javascript (I finally understand what devs from other languages were talking about!). My workflow is just smoother for everything except Clojure and system admin (but I use emacs for those, atom isn't any better there).

VS Code was my first not-Sublime, not-vim editor, but...I really, really missed my four-up display with four editors in a square configuration. I went to Atom because of that and because of VS Code's inability to keep a pane open even with no tabs (just because nothing's in it doesn't mean I want it closed).

In case you haven't tried it, have you opened new windows (Ctrl+Shift+N)?

I know it's not what you asked for but it's how I use it for a similar work flow. They don't close when I close the last file.

I want a shared drawer across everything. Anything else eats screen real estate.

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