I feel like VSCode is falling apart | Hacker News Reader

I feel like VSCode is falling apart

16 pointsothmanosx19 comments

Not just VSCode, but other pieces of software I always use, not sure if that's related to AI, but this genuinely upsets me.

I would expect things to be better as AI helps accelerate development and bug reports and whatnot, but it looks like the opposite is actually happening... which is concerning.

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How does zed.dev compare?

I don't use vscode because it's always felt heavy on my (older) machine.

Zed seems to work okay. Curious to know how it compares

I tried Zed too. It's really performant and all, but I feel like I got used to VS Code too much and even looking at a different themed editor feels... awkward. Extensions is a must for me. I have plenty of extensions and I think Zed won't be having native support for extensions for a while, at least to the same degree as VS Code.

> but other pieces of software I always use

I am planning a KL->HKG trip with a friend and failed to book an AirAsia flight because their website doesn't allow it. Their Mobile app (a wrapper around their web app?) also crashes when moving to payment. I ended up taking a Hong Kong Express flight (price was quite close) but then my friend had an error on the HKE website and couldn't complete the booking.

Fun times.

You're not alone. This is the reason why I switched from VSCode to nvim (AstroNvim to be specific). It has all the things I need with the ability to add any extra plugins necessary while using less resources.

I can't tell how much less resources it uses - haven't really tested that. To be fair to VSCode often times biggest resource hog is various language servers.

Jetbrains (PyCharm, RustRover etc) is as solid of an experience as when I started programming 15 years ago. I would recommend you give it a try!

I cannot remember when I started using is, but I remember that at first there was only IntelliJ which could be modified via Plugins to be used for PHP and HTML, JavaScript anyway. It felt better then Adobe Dreamweaver at the time.

I remember the - today we would say shitstorm - negative buzz when JetBrains evolved from one IDE with Plugins to many IDEs with language specific plugins and introducing a subscription based model where all where available.

So more than 15 years, but since then nothing beat them and it is my longest running subscription. I benefitted many years of the early rabat that people got when they joined the subscription mode. Many years JetBrains spared the early joiners of price increases, which was cool.

Before that people would have bought IntelliJ for a hefty price tag, but it was fair.

Fortunately JetBrains never lost their focus and goal. I was so glad that JetBrains seemed to give AI a pass until they saw a way to let users benefit from its utilization. My guess is, that an Agent AI IDE is in the works, kind of like DataSpell and DataGrip.

Nothing bad to say about JetBrains, and I didn't get all the buzz about VSCode. Plugin-System was a mess, not a strength, highly conflicting, while of course some were really nice to have but not really thought through or tested on devs for productivity.

Especially in the beginning VSCode feels really handy, but was an annoyance over the long run. Plugins broke, security. Also in team environments and especially large to very large amounts of teams VSCode is hell due to no possibility to enforce plugins via policy - at least at the time I tried around 2020.

JetBrains have the added benefit of simply working consistently and I find it helpful to not have a superapp for all programming languages integrated into one but separate instances with distinct features depending on the language context.

JetBrains IDEs are used to build stuff that is reliable and the fact they they have to earn money it great: the customer is the focus, not a community of people cheerleading only.

I had the honor to talk to the product lead of VSCode (he joined Google) around 2024. We talked for over an hours exchanging ideas and insights, stories from the trenches. Nice dude.

I don't bad mouth VSCode, it just doesn't click for me for the professional usage for the most popular programming languages.

A perfect fit however, was in a niche, where nothing from JetBrains could match it: - M68k programming for Amiga 500 - 6510 assembler for C64 demo coding

Turbo Pascal was very buggy and disappointing, but VSCode is unmatched and top notch when it comes to Amiga and C64 coding cross platform.

I have a similar impression. I think it's because the workflow isn't fully refined, and the IDE interfaces don't match that undefined flow. These are strange times; for a moment, I felt Antigravity was what I needed, but it was just a stripped-down VSCode. I simply don't understand the new VSCode Agents window. The impact is so vast that many of us are returning to the simplicity and power of the terminal.

Antigravity is unstable based on my experience, it is always insisting that I update it, and there are also constantly occurring bugs.

yeah, the only reason i keep using it is the free student trial and a second activity bar lol

Heavily rely on extensions on VSCode... Looks like VSCode these days is transforming more towards a highly-customisable hub of dev extensions and tool compilation - I reckon it's good.

It looks like they're becoming simpler tools with an AI chat bolted on — and that might be fine, but I'd at least expect them to keep functioning as an IDE (with a file tree, file viewer, and chat, at minimum).

With the increase of work with AI tools, I see myself using work trees a hell of a lot more compared to before the AI agents. And I think having too many work trees in a single repo is just choking VS Code. As it's not really built for such use cases.And looks like They don't want to optimize it for dealing with more work trees and being an editor like it always have been but they want to move closer to Claude/Codex.

I am stuck using an older VSCode. A few versions ago, it stopped connecting to my remote machine.

I'm curious to know how you got yourself into such a situation.

I guess they updated the way it connects to the remote machine. Perhaps something about my setup wasn't one of their test cases?

The future of VSCode is quite uncertain, as newer "IDEs" are moving-on toward not seeing any code, and soon not even seeing the filetree as we are going toward the path of full automation.

VSCode might retain old-school developers but it will keep shrinking.

I kinda got this feeling when I saw that button in the upper right corner, clicking it transforms VSCode from a code editor to a Claude/Codex clone.

If nothing else, I’m annoyed by the seemingly daily messages to update VS Code. It seems all it ever has is more updates for AI, likely written by AI.

I’m effectively forced to use VS Code, because of work. If it wasn’t for this situation I would I would have already moved away from it, or never started using it in the first place.

What else would you use instead of VS Code?

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