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Comment by barishnamazov | Hacker News Reader

For me, the friction of VS Code is more cognitive than computational. I call it the "searching with your eyes" [0] problem. To make it clear, I've no problems with VSCode but haven't used it in a long time -- maybe it has added some keyboard-only features that makes workflow smoother.

VS Code's heavy reliance on the file explorer tree forces you to constantly visually scan nested directories to navigate. When I switched to Neovim (with Telescope/jump lists), I moved from visual scanning to mental mapping. I don't look for where a file is; I type what the file is. It sounds subtle, but removing that micro-latency of "eye-to-mouse-to-tree" keeps you in the flow state much longer.

[0] https://barish.me/blog/stop-searching-with-your-eyes/

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All IDEs including VSCode have fuzzy-finding for files, and fuzzy-finding for symbols as well. Between these, I never find myself using the file tree, except when it's the best tool for the job ("what other files are in this directory?", file tree manipulation (which IDEs recognize you doing, adjusting imports for you!) etc.).

I actually notice how this pattern is very fast, but I lose a code base's mental map. Coworkers might take longer to open any individual file but have a much better idea of repo layout as a whole. That makes them effective otherwise.

I have worked in monorepos for large codebases. In those, file trees are completely useless because you can't fit the repo layout to your mind. Also, the file trees are so large that when I'd ask a coworker using VSCode to open a file, they'd usually take a few seconds trying to locate it (on remote ssh, it even takes a bit to load files to expand directory as well).

For smaller code bases, I usually read the repo first and I'm able to learn what exists while working through it.

VSCode doesn't heavily rely on the file explorer, that is personal preference. I use its jump to file far more than the explorer, both by filename, by reference jump and by "dumb" jump, a plugin that does simple reference jump with rg. That jump by reference just works now in VSCode for all the languages I use puts it ahead of neovim which requires a bit of fiddling to get going.

Don’t you just press ctrl p and type in vscode?

That exists, though it doesn't have a preview of the file. Also, jump lists to quickly take a look and ctrl+o to go back is a huge game changer for me. Not sure if VSCode supports that now, haven't used it in a long time.

It has jump previews and yea ctrl+o works

Neat! Does it also preview files when doing fuzzy file or symbol search?

I don't believe so, built in, because I see some extensions for adding it.

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