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Comment by laksdjfkasljdf | Hacker News Reader

VS Code, the text editor, is a trojan horse.

Microsoft is selling you into the IDE, in small portions. This is similar to the IBM approach with JAVA last decade(s?).

You install a "text editor" for simple things, like code completion. Before you realize you don't even know which compiler you are using or where it came from. You just press F5 and look at convenient break points. And somehow it only runs right on Azure :) the last one is a joke (for now?)

As a language popularity grows, it approaches the Java curve. Just like nobody who uses `npm` like (or know) maven, nobody using VS Code know about the old java IDEs, and how they become todays Java IDEs. Or how the React monolith is the same as the Java Monolith.

I guess people mixing up java and javascript in the 90s... just thad more, long term vision?

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You're right - it is a trojan horse and people are eating up the 'MS heart Open Source' PR. It's obvious when you look at what they're doing with language servers.

They've replaced the open source Python language server with a closed source one. The C/C++ was always closed. Their remote feature and collaboration tools are also closed. They're slowly making people depend on MS services without even realising it.

They want you to run your development environment on Azure and are making it possible piece by piece, turning your IDE into a thin client. And they're open about that aim but still call VS Code "open source". It is not - it has open source components and lots of telemetry so MS can develop those services. If people are happy with that, so be it but the 'love' they get is undeserved.

I didn't realize they replaced the Python language server with a proprietary one, that's too bad. https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release/issues/4 has some brief discussion before it was closed.

> And they're open about that aim but still call VS Code "open source".

Yeah, it's a principle worth remembering: "open source" doesn't mean anything if most of the software only runs on someone else's cloud without you having any control or visibility into it.

> They've replaced the open source Python language server with a closed source one. The C/C++ was always closed. Their remote feature and collaboration tools are also closed. They're slowly making people depend on MS services without even realising it.

So, what you're saying is that the absolutely enormous number of Python and C/C++ people can't produce a decent open-source plugin while tiny communities like the Rust folks can?

I don't like what Microsoft is doing here, but, let's be honest, the "open source community" has also spoken and what it has said is "We are a bunch of cheap, selfish jerks."

You don't have to fund very many programmers to create these plugins. Full-time funding for maybe 5 or 6 programmers per plugin can pull it off (and maybe not that for something like the remote development plugin). And not all programmers around the world cost $200K per year. However, even if they did, that's $1 million per year to support a plugin.

So, no company or individual out of the entire Python or C/C++ ecosystem thinks that's a worthwhile expense? No group of 5 or 6 companies think that's a worthwhile expense?

As we found with OpenSSL and other open source projects, no, apparently they don't.

Don't bemoan Microsoft's licensing when the problem sits with the "open source community" being cheap bastards.

Multiple open source C++ language server for VS Code already exist.

Open-source C/C++ LSP server exists, clangd exists and ccls(https://github.com/MaskRay/ccls) is build on libclang which works very well for a few of my projects. I am not sure about python since i don't use it much.

I'm legit confused on what you're trying to say. Are you saying tech stacks are a bad thing? Or that corporate investment or connection to a tech stack is a bad thing? What's your proposed solution or alternative?

One thing I _think_ you're saying that I do find important:

It's crucial to have experience in more than one ecosystem and tech stack, as you learn a lot from seeing communities reinvent the wheel and not learn from one another. You get to see common patterns in software development and engineering and, sometimes, you find novel approaches that are completely alien to the engineering ecosystem you started out in.

I am saying opaque, closed and proprietary tech stacks are the danger. See the other reply for a better discussion on what is happening. Basically Microsoft* is very well known for taking open source projects, extending them a little in a nice package, and then silently moving all the code to a proprietary closed solution that later on only works on windows or their platforms.

\* microsoft is well known for it, but Google does it a lot too.

Which IDE? If you mean Visual Studio, that's a Windows only product and it's really only good for Windows specific development like C# and MSVC. If you do C# or C++ development on Windows or XBox then you're likely already using Visual Studio and the community edition is a free product for individual use or open source products.

If you mean some future IDE that MS is working on that they plan to evolve VS Code into, I don't see MS trying to sell macOS or Linux users a proprietary dev environment or toolchain. It's certainly possible but your post doesn't provide any justification for that position.

Visual Studio for macOS (and Linux) exists, it was previously named Xamarin, and before that MonoDevelop.

Sure, just like Visual Studio Code exists for macOS and Linux. My specific argument was Microsoft is unlikely to release a proprietary IDE for macOS or Linux. Visual Studio for macOS is free and Microsoft open sourced Xamarin and Monodevelop [1] when they acquired it back in 2016.

[1] https://github.com/mono/monodevelop

Visual Studio for Mac is nowhere near as good as on Windows. I can't speak for how it is on Linux. I'm glad it exists, but I've found it a pain to use.

Obviously lots of C# development is still on Windows, but let’s not act like it’s 2003. I work on C# all day everyday and most of what I write runs on Linux.

Indeed, Microsoft Edge for Linux too is a trojan horse. Windows needs to gain leverage against open development platforms. They they need to reach other ecosystems (fedora, centos, mac os). Just like Google when you use their technologies you bet the app is talking to the mothership.

> Microsoft is selling you into the IDE, in small portions

what are they selling me

Their ecosystem.

Github and Azure integration.

I don't know even other platforms are starting to build plugin integrations into it.

For example, Google Cloud Code which lets you deploy/manage cloud run and k8s from it.

I was already bought into their IDE environment. :) VS Code runs much better than their old offerings.

You're right; my years of experience with Java, Maven, Netbeans, Eclipse (eugh...), and IntelliJ completely evaporated when I did 'npm init' on my current (Node and React) project, which I'm working on in VS Code.

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