Every time I found myself editing a website, building a web application or just dabbing in a new language - Visual Studio Code always seem to float my boat.
Visual Studio Code is a very powerful text editor that is built by Microsoft. I prefere it over the listed text editors because of its vast array of features.
This feature allows you to go beyond syntax highlighting and beyond autocomplete. It provides me with function definitions and smart completion which really makes coding fun and easy to learn.
Debugging
The debugging tool is a very attractive feature of Visual Studio Code. It wont alert you when a cockroach is 20 feet from your house, but it will allow you to attach your running apps, debug at breaking points, declare call stacks, and it even has an interactive console
Git Version Control
This thing is a beast when it comes to working with projects under version control. It makes syncing, pulling, pushing, initializing, and committing a breeze! You can also review diffs, stage files, and push and pull from any hosted Git service!
That not enough to satisfy your hunger to crunch code ? What if i told you they have a database of installable extensions, languages, themes, and debuggers. The extensions feature is super awesome because there are hundreds to choose from and they run on separate processes ensuring that your editor doesn’t get bogged down!
I encourage you to check it out and explore! Let me know what you think about it!
VIM is still my go-to for most programming things, mostly out of habit and experience, but I’m starting to use VS Code more and more. A few of the plusses that I’ve noticed:
The git integration is amazing.
It’s great for writing Markdown. My blog runs on Jekyll and I write all of my posts in VS Code.
Emmet is integrated out of the box.
Even though they’re both built with Electron, it doesn’t have the same performance issues that have plagued Atom (which probably also means that Electron isn’t the problem here, which a good sign for people who are interested in building stuff with Electron.
I don’t think I’ve tried to install any extensions because it pretty much does everything I use it for out of the box.
Name aside, it’s not really related to Visual Studio. VS Code was based on MS’s Monaco editor and then they used the Electron framework to bring it to the desktop.
The similarities in between Visual Studio Code are the name and IntelliSense, that it is an IDE, and that they are developed by MS, yet with very different licenses and philosophies, commercial versus open source. So to call it a cut-down version will be a bit of a misinterpretation in general. Even the platforms the two IDE’s are built on are different.
I have a bit of a bias towards Sublime but I do have VSCode and it’s far better for quick coding in C++ for competitions.
However, I feel that the plugin/theme ecosystem isn’t quite as extensive and like all electron apps, it just doesn’t work that well for larger files, and I start missing Sublime’s speed. Nonetheless an excellent option and it’s completely free!
I was very partial to Sublime Text, but since hearing a lot about VS Code on podcasts like JavaScript Jabber, I decided to give VS Code a try. I haven’t looked back since.
It’s my go-to when I’m using my laptop, Atom is buggy as hell but VS Code works just fine. Their marketplace for plugins is huge, it’s only missing better themes so it doesn’t look so weird haha
