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Comment by realityking | Hacker News Reader

VisualStudio Code is really taking over, at least in terms of the commercial world. I wonder if GitHub’s Atom is next.

Given Microsoft's ownership of Github, I suspect it's inevitable. If anything, I'm surprised that it hasn't already happened.

There is no point in killing something which is already dead.

You will only get bad press. Much easier to let it rot.

There's plenty of point. Rotted projects are bad press.

That sounds like something you wish is true, not a reality. I can't think of a project left to rot that got notable bad press, but I can think of tons of cancelled ones that left sour tastes in people's mouths. From a brand perspective, rot is 100% the right call.

Google AppEngine (python variant) has been rotting forever. It's still stuck on Python 2 and has received no API improvements.

1. That doesn't mean killing it is worse, and I'd go as far as to say this case is objectively better to let rot. Imagine the outrage and brand stink that would create for Google, who is already known for killing things liberally, in a product space that is focused on longterm reliability. By letting it rot, people who deployed and are just leaving on autopilot don't have to do anything, and GCP offers lots of alternatives that can use Python 3.

2. Bad product management / development speed seems to be the case here, not rot or killing, as it seems it's actually not stuck on Python 2 anymore, or for long [1]

3. Even if neither of the two things above were true, I have seen no bad press on GCP due to this, and I'm a heavy GCP user, though just not in this niche. I've used Python cloud functions as well as GAE though.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python3

That is typical Microsoft though, they won't shutdown the plug, but will stop talking about it, you won't see any references anywhere and eventually everyone moves away.

I tried both and VS Code is a clear winner. I think Microsoft is keeping Atom around as a "consolation prize" to the people they acquired.

Since VS Code is open-source under an MIT license, it's hard to complain! I'm glad to be using a single editor for almost all my coding, customized just the way I like.

VS Code is not as open source as you might think. A lot of critical functionality is in plugins that aren't FOSS, such as the Python plugin and the Remote plugins (Container, SSH, etc.). I think you're also not able to (or not supposed to? unsure) access the official plugin directory with an open source build.

I definitely appreciate that the core is open source, but using the open source version is less fun than it sounds. You really want to use the freeware proprietary VS Code to get a good experience.

If we're going to be using a proprietary text editor anyways, then I wish Sublime Text and its community were still as active as they used to be.

I still use Sublime Text to this day because it's far and away the fastest option among these usuals, and I do most everything else in a terminal. VSCode is turning into the Chrome of free IDEs and I really don't like that direction at all.

I can't think of anything off the top of my head that I'm missing in Sublime, anyway.

Unfortunately more and more of Microsoft's VS Code extensions are going closed source.

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