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nickpeterson

Just wait till Microsoft starts charging a license for vs code and developers heads implode.

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Nah, I'd just stop using it and go to something else.

I still use sublimeText which was gaining some traction before VScode took over.

Isn't vscode open-source? I'm using vscodium with all MS links removed, I don't think MS can charge licenses for that.

The really good features that make VSCode worth using (remote development) are not open source.

Fortunately I never left emacs.

Emacs is forever.

vscode would be dropped like a stone

Not until there is a viable alternative.

But with the integration of Github Co-Pilot, they can now make subscription fees from all of those users of VSCode.

There’s already a de-Microsofted fork called VSCodium. Most people would probably migrate there, and development will proceed independently.

Viable alternatives to VSCode have been around since the 90s

The explosive success of VSCode reveals that this is not true.

The popularity of a single development tool in a particular category does not make all other tools in the same (or a similar) category non-viable.

Sublime Text was my go-to for a long time, and still is when I'm not working on a formal project.

I don't understand why anyone would use VSCode, now.

Between Intellij, Vim, Emacs, Sublime Text there are at least 4 better Editors / IDE for any given language.

Tbh for me it’s the better plug-in UX and the built in debugger. Of course I use IJ for real stuff.

Due to JetBrains’s (alleged?) links to Russia, their products are banned at some companies. :(

The founders are Russian, but they actually condemned the invasion of Ukraine, and suspended sales in Russia and Belarus

I've never used VsCode, so I'm pretty sure viable alternatives are around

It's nowhere near good enough that people will pay for it. IntelliJ it is not.

No kidding if I have to pay for it I am going to pay for something that is way better. I use it because it is free (me being a cheap fool) and better than eclipse.

i'll just go back to notepad++. although i must say it's been in decline for the past year or so. they removed a theme i liked to use and i don't care for the UI changes at all. But it is still functional, at least until the next downgrade from the developer.

Eclipse is also still a great IDE with tons of plugins.

The LSP stuff has actually unlocked a lot of fringe editor choices. Even new editors with tiny communities can provide a lot of IDE like features by just implementing the client side of the API.

It would be a huge bait and switch, but honestly I would most likely end up paying for it. I spend over 4 hours a day in VSCode, and it's better than everything else I've used

I know, right? It even made me take up writing extensions as a hobby. Mostly linters and syntax highlighters for really exotic file formats.

Hold on that could actually happen? It's not officially open source or anything?

No - it won't happen. The core editor is open source.

At best, MS has some limitations around running some plugins (that they also develop) that require the licensed version of VSCode, rather than the OSS build.

Most of those plugins either use MS servers (ex: Live Share) or use toolchains that MS is historically more closed with (their C++ toolchains).

Generally speaking - you can use OSS Code today, without any issues. There's a flatpak here https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.visualstudio.code-oss and many distros package it as the default...

I run arch and it's in the repos as simply "code" - https://archlinux.org/packages/?name=code

I run this as my default everywhere, and it works a-ok. There is a small subset of devs that would likely feel some pain losing the closed extensions, but the total impact feels overblown to me.

The code is opensource, but not the ecosystem. Microsoft is maneuvering towards the same position as Android with respect to Google Play. Not technically mandatory, but so many conveniences are built on it that it may as well be for anyone not interested in investing a lot of time finding workarounds.

I think it is, but there is also a fork call VSCodium without the telemetry, I guess people could just pivot to that?

https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium

Pretty easy, just release new features as paid plugins that need subscriptions and make minimal updates to the core program.

Just make it part of Microsoft365 and don’t really bother updating the original. Done.

at that point I'd just use vim in a terminal

vim is goat anyway

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