I recently bought a new dev machine (after much deliberation, I went with a refurbished 2016 MacBook Pro). This was a great opportunity to reconsider the applications I use for my software development. I had been writing code in Atom on my old computer, and I was happy enough with it to not bother switching... for the most part.
I like the idea behind Atom, that it's super customizable with widely-known web technologies to ensure it's on the cutting edge in terms of packages written for it and fast adoption of new technologies. But it was slow, and not all that advanced in any special way. I was open to change.
I dip around between technologies in, mostly, the web development space, and I did not want a full-on IDE. There are a few options for basic code editors out there, and the idea of moving to something like Vim never really appealed to me. Atom and VS Code both lose badly in performance to Sublime.
So why did I go with VS Code?
People fucking love it. Between features, performance, use cases, etc. you can make a case for any editor, and I can't take two months to immerse myself in each one. I took the community for insights. In this thread from a few months ago "Which editor do you use and why?", the verdict was clear to me. Nobody raved about any editor like they did about VS Code. I read through most of the whole thread and the positive feelings towards this editor stood out above the rest.
Here are a couple examples.
VS Code. I Loveeeeeeeeeeeee VS Code, well it's been nearly 6 months with vscode. In this time period i used many other editor/IDE also like atom, sublime which i previously used too before Code, I recommend this to everyone, Please have a try once....
The main keys to use VS Code:
- Peek View
- Intellisense
- Integrated Terminal
- Built-in Git
- Task Runner
- Built-In Node.js Debugger
These all features are built-in
Highly Recommended for all the JavaScript and NodeJs Developer's
There are many more awesome features...
Have a try once, code.visualstudio.com/download
You can ThankMe Later!
VS Code for sure! Absolutely love it! The Intellisense for TypeScript especially but excellent support for JavaScript as well as many other languages! So much faster than Atom particularly when opening very large files. Also I found Atom had far too many package errors too often, something I haven't ever seen with VS Code. I also prefer it over Sublime Text for several reasons: It's totally free, I don't have to pay $70 for it. Also I find it to be a far more modern experience. It also has monthly updates that significantly improve the experience each time, and there's a fantastic extension community. And all of those editors are better than Webstorm, which is far too clunky and slow of an experience for me.
I've heavily used Sublime, Atom, and Webstorm in the past so I based my decision very much off of experience.
People have different reasons for liking different editors, but people love this editor. It has now been a few days for me and I can see why people like it. The git integration is very convenient, and it seems well-designed overall. I'm not one to really fanboy over any piece of technology, but in my entire time using Atom, I never really felt like I was using an editor that was giving me all that much.
I still can't make a strong argument for any editor over another with regards to features and metrics, but the passion for this editor stood out and that was enough for me to buy in. In order to feel good about the choice, one also has to be confident not only in the present product in the direction of the project. I like what Microsoft is doing these days and I trust them to support and lean into VS Code and I am happy with the switch. Ultimately the editor only matters so much as it gets out of the way and lets you write software, but I'm happy with my current situation.
Update: Still using VSCode, and now everyone else is it seems.
Top comments (81)
I still use Sublime 3 because I've figured out what plugins to use to get a similar (if not better) experience with it compared to Atom/VS Code. I tried VS Code a few months ago, but I was too used to the Sublime Text keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+Click for multi-cursor in particular) and I couldn't re-bind all of them due to bugs in VS Code itself. If they ever fix those issues, I may switch over for all but very large files.
Have you seen the official Sublime Text Keymap extension? Microsoft released it a couple months ago (as well as an Atom Keymap extension). I have a co-worker who, once he got his hands on the Sublime Text Keymap extension, has never gone back to Sublime. He had used Sublime for years and kept talking about how it was the best, but VS Code won him over big time.
Yeah, I tried the Sublime Text Keymap extension, but as I mentioned, due to bugs in VS Code itself it can't remap multiple cursor selection to Ctrl+Click, and that killed it for me. I'm far too used to Ctrl+Click and from what I read, that sometimes (or all the time, I can't remember for sure) causes VS Code to try to run some or all of your current plugins on whatever word you're hovering over in the file you're currently editing.
They added the ability to change the modifier for multi-select and hyper clicks. code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_1...
Tons of issues and requested or "missing" features often get added in the next few release cycles, if not immediately. Better indentation for languages like Ruby and Lua was just recently introduced as well, for example.
Hmm, I may have to check out VS Code again...
What's the name of those plugins?
Over time the list has changed depending on what I'm working on/with, but the core plugins (typically) consist of the following (not all are strictly necessary, some of them are just for [better?] visual effects):
I must be in the minority.
I use both VS Code and Atom, but I much prefer Atom. I have heard the argument that it is slow, but I have never found this in the many many months of using it. It opens within seconds, just like VS Code, so there's no reason for me to switch.
In fact, the only thing I use VS Code for is writing markdown files..
I switched from Sublime Text to Visual Studio code and never looked back. I mostly do TypeScript and Angular development, and the built-in TypeScript support plus a few plugins like npm Intellisense, Path Intellisense and angular2-inline make it my go-to IDE.
I haven't gotten started with intellisense yet, but I love the idea.
It makes a huge difference.
The time savings alone are worth the investment, not to mention being able to do things like peek at classes, navigate to other files using Ctrl + click, etc.
I like the idea of Atom, but found it a bit slow, even on machines with i7 processors and plenty of RAM. VSC runs really fast, even on my slightly older Surface Pro 4, and even faster on my new Surface (5).
For JavaScript / TypeScript based projects, I really wouldn't want to use anything else. I still do some Python development, and that's one area where VSC could use some help.
If VSC could recognize which virtualenv is active without having to start it from the command line, that would be really convenient, and if someone would port the Anaconda plugin to VSC, I wouldn't have to use Sublime at all.
I love Git integration. Highlighting the changed lines in the document and the scrollbar makes it easy to see where you're working when you're scrolling through your document.
One of the sore points for me with VS Code was a lack of "paste and indent", but that's easy to fix with an extension: marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...
Hasn't that sort of git integration been available in every IDE for years? I seem to remember NetBeans doing it with an option to use its own internal revision system as well as git, svn, cvs, etc, and that was several years ago. Even vim has had plugins to show git changes with little coloured markers in the gutter for that long.
Not that I'm saying it's not good in VCS, I haven't tried it - I'm just saying that what you're describing is not something that would make me think it was anything special.
Nice, installed.
There's also several auto formatting user settings that accomplish the same thing:
Note that this will format the whole document as opposed to just the pasted lines. However, if you like a cleanly formatted document, that won't be a problem. It may, however, take some tweaking to get the formatting rules to how you like them.
UPDATE: Just got a new version of VS Code released today! Now includes auto indentation:
code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_1...
Helps if you don't want the full formatting, just indentation.
I don't think popularity is a very good reason to use a specific editor. Editors are a very personal thing and should make sense for your workflow. Whether people like it or love it shouldn't matter, it should be about you anyways.
I'm not sure where the threshold would be, but at some level you need some popularity to ensure the best tools get written for the editor.
It isn't something to directly factor in. People will not use an editor which doesn't have good plugins so its more the other way around. It has more to do with how invested the developers working on the editor are.
On my new machine, I realized after a few days of work I hadn't installed Atom yet, but VS Code was on it day 1. Everything I felt could be better with Atom is in VS Code. I still use Atom and Sublime, but VS Code is where I default to now.
What do you still use Atom for?
The same I use Sublime for, having another editor handy for when I open so many screens I might go insane 😆.
Okay, okay, okay! See what you made me do....I'm downloading VS Code now. Of course, right around the time I have all my Atom plugins stable and I'm super comfortable. But now you made me curious. :-)
I kinda feel alone...
I started with Atom, tried to switch to VS Code but found it lacking so many times, then recently switched from Atom to Sublime Text 3 and am loving it. It has just about everything I loved from Atom, including packages, and is way faster.
.-.
I too work with VS Code. I was working with Atom, but when it arrives in mixed content apps, Atom goes nuts. Sublime as well. The only company that provides product with full support for RTL and bi-directional languages is Microsoft. From MS Office suite to VS Code.
I'm trying to switch from Atom to Code. But is not that simple for me.
Atom have so much worst performance, but I didn't have any problem with that.
And I miss a lot of features from Atom. Like
1- The linter is so much simple in code, it doesn't have any highlight in the lines.
2- Can't highlight the changed files at explorer. (git changes)
3- A lot of miss packages/extensions.
4- All the laravel extensions made the emmet get wrong.
I like the interface. I think it is in a good way. But both Atom and Code have huge bad points. They looks like good choises in the future, not right now.