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Comment by funnym0nk3y | Hacker News Reader

Is there any advantage in using this over using vscode with platform.io?

In my first years as design student I spent quite some time programming in the Arduino IDE because it worked pretty much out of the box plug-n-play.

Happy to see an integrated rich serial data plotter. One of my tricks used to be to do a: Serial.print(inputVal * 100 * "-") to get a basic visual 'chart' stream going to test sensor inputs and the like.

Serial plotter has been a thing for VERY long time.

Not for v2 of the IDE.

It's been a while but I made a plotter for a client several years ago kluged a simple rs232 client that fed data to gnuplot as a plotter and they could also do some basic signal filters I put in the client. Gnuplot is good for quicky jobs where you want to graph things, even real time. Along the lines of what's going on here https://funprojects.blog/2020/09/10/gnuplot-realtime-plots-i...

Maybe it depends on your preferences. As someone who enjoys "suckless" tools on Linux, it makes me happy when I can avoid VS Code, however, many embedded projects out there just default to Platform IO. A simpler Arduino IDE is an advantage for me. With a more capable Arduino IDE, maybe there will be less VS Code dependence.

As I understand it this is really just a specifically configured vs code fork for arduino.

>The new IDE is based on the Eclipse Theia framework, which is an open source project based on the same architecture as VS Code (language server protocol, extensions, debugger).

You can use PlatformIO from the command line, so it should work with any editor in principle. (It’s written in Python.) The main thing missing would be the glue code to tell the editor which directories to find header files.

I think this is more targeted at beginners or at hardware/electronics people that have little software experience. In those cases vscode + platform.io is probably more daunting than a simple arduino editor with a button to flash your code to the chip.

I feel like the complexity is being oversold a bit here, I agree Arduino is very beginner friendly, but PlatformIO is very much a "Click and Play" development experience

For an absolute beginner PlatformIO is off the beaten path so I'd say skip it to start, but if you have any familiarity with traditional IDEs, PlatformIO is probably 90% as beginner friendly while being more of a traditional development environment.

2.0 being based on Monaco will help bridge the gap, but it's clear that they're still going for a very pared down experience in the Arduino IDE. Other comments comparing it to Notepad are about right... it's very easy to get into Notepad but can be limiting once you get past the initial hump

I'm using PlatformIO now, but in my experience the installation experience is hit and miss, due to lack of feedback while downloading and installing things. It just hangs, and you don't know if it failed.

A workaround is to not follow their suggestion to install from the VS Code plugin and install the command line tools instead.

Also, serial monitoring and plotting isn't very good. I ended up writing my own: https://serialviz.skybrian.com/

That said, package management is more sane. Having a platformio.ini file that you can check in helps with reproducibility.

just installing vscode is daunting. Especially if you are on linux where you use apt to install the arduino ide.

If you can't install vscode and platform.io tools you're gonna have a really rough time with even basic aruduino programming. There are probably a dozen good videos on it on youtube. I don't knwo anyone who just sits down at a terminal and doesn't look up at tutorial or whatnot on what they want to do.

Knowing algorithms and hardware is completely unrelated to knowing where to click in vscode.

Yeah but everything is a couple clicks away in the arduino library and you don't have to understand much about how the libraries and such work together (say for making a make/cmake file). Also the IDE sort of silos you off from mixing up projects and such as it just launches a new instance for anything "new". It's great for beginners but the lack of control probably drives most software developers crazy and they opt for platform io or jsut command line tools. It's nothing like notepad. Notepad doesn't let you include libraries, upload, have a build in serial and plotter, etc. For playing around it's fine. I've seen some fairly nice hobby projects done exclusively in it.

For one it's a single install, so you don't need to install VSCode, add the extension, restart, make some changes in the project config .ini... This is a huge deal for hobbyists who are often not computer power users or even fully computer-literate (often children who are just learning this stuff).

Otherwise, you can do anything Arduino 2 can do with VSCode+PIO, it'll just take some setup.

It's simple and easy to get started with, if you're already using platform.io then there's not really any advantage to going back.

If you’re comfortable using platform.io, probably not, you’re not the target audience for the Arduino IDE, which I think is much more focused on people who are just picking up electronics and embedded development.

It's simpler, so if you only want a really quick program, like something you can knock out in 5 minutes, the Arduino IDE is faster to get going. But that's the only advantage I have found.

No for professional coders, yes for beginners.

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