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Comment by tinybug | Hacker News Reader

It's simple, light weight, a lot of cool extensions. I use vscode for developing nodejs, python, ffmpeg, Qt, frontend...it's my all in one IDE.

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How exactly it is lightweight when it carries a copy of Chrome browser in the background? Jut at idle with no files opened it uses 600 Mb of memory. PS: it is a nice software which I also use extensively, but Electron is an abomination, Flash of 21 century.

It's not "lightweight" at all. lol

Compared to say, intellij; it just feels lightweight. It's nicely optimized at least.

JetBrains IDEs are all by far the most clunky of all the choices.

You clearly haven't used Eclipse (and I say this as someone who chooses to use Eclipse).

true... sorry I forgot that monster still exists

They're also leaps and bounds better as IDEs than VSCode. I'd gladly exchange some "clunky"ness for a better experience and more features driven by a proper GUI.

I use both Visual Studiio and JetBrains Rider at work. Rider has much less loading time and way fewer micro/macro stutters.

Just opened it up on my machine (2019 Macbook Pro)- 65MB with no files opened. No idea how you're getting to almost 10x that.

Edit: My bad, apparently I didn't count all processes.

You have to take into account the helper and renderer processes. A freshly launched instance takes around 250 MB on my system. It consumes more as you open files that trigger lazy loading of additional extensions. Still less than other IDEs, though.

Interesting. I also just opened it on my MacBook Pro it uses ~300MB of memory with 5 extensions. emacs with about half a gazillion packages uses 91MB.

10 minutes ago, I downloaded the latest VSCode 1.43 and installed it on a fresh macOS 10.15.3.

Launching it with no files open, the total private+shared memory adds up to ~300 MB. Screenshot of macOS Activity Monitor:

https://imgur.com/a/xDdzDRr

This memory usage is roughly the same on Windows 10 Task Manager:

https://imgur.com/a/xWkdoN1

In contrast, the so-called "heavier" classic Visual Studio 2019 v16.5 (devenv.exe) with no files open, Task Manager stats shows it using less than ~200 MB.

I think some folks get the impression VSCode is "lightweight" because the GUI/UI is lightweight. VSCode is less "busy" looking... less menu options, no ribbon with icons, less multi-panels of properties, etc. VSCode's GUI looks more like a bare-bones "text editor" than an IDE.

It's lightweight when compared to other IDEs like Visual Studio, IntelliJ or Xcode.

How they do it while using Electron? No idea.

lightweight maybe is not correct. maybe simple is more correct.

How do you develop ffmpeg what do you mean ? What kind of projects can one create ? Do you mind sharing resources ?

You got me interested ^^

I develop some filters to ffmpeg or read ffmpeg codes in vscode. Build by makefile and then debug in ffmpeg.

How does it compare with Clion, the IDE from jetbrains.

There are some extensions Clion doesn't have...I install many extension in vscode.

Can you debug C++ with line breaks in VS Code?

Yes

The deceptive answer is probably "Yes" to whatever such incarnation of that question you ask. But as always when it comes to VSCode, it's buggy, half-configured and most of the config is weirdly hidden inside json-schema driven JSON config files that may or may not work. So much so that for me it effectively becomes a "No" answer.

That's been my experience with watching stubborn fellow co-workers struggling with it while doing python development. On paper, it has all the features and whistles of course, so therefore it's the "best IDE".

Code completion, type-annotation, debugging, virtualenv, built-in linting, docker support, etc. But then when you use them, it's a virtual catastrophe of configs, random "does it work, no, try the config again, does it work now? Yes No?" And so it continues, for an hour. Meanwhile, a python IDE like PyCharm just works without hassle.

I'm using https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools to debug.

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