@Stevie
I haven’t. I’m strictly a developer who has written for many platforms. Developing for Windows has always been a more pleasant experience for complex software.
Kiran said:
Microsoft has a history of being developer-friendly and maintaining high standards in their software, so this shouldn’t be shocking.
/s? You think VS Code is good, but you really can’t mean that about all their other software?
@Keir
No sarcasm. Everything Microsoft I’ve worked on has been easier to use compared to its rivals. There are few exceptions, but overall, I’ve always seen solid architecture and excellent (and I can’t emphasize this enough) documentation.
Kiran said:
Microsoft has a history of being developer-friendly and maintaining high standards in their software, so this shouldn’t be shocking.
I don’t know, the GitHub rework in React is currently pretty weak.
Where did you hear that? Visual Studio Code is hugely slow.
I started out programming with VSCode. Not that I’m worried about speed right now, but are there any better free alternatives? Is there a go-to app every programmer should use?
Nova said:
I started out programming with VSCode. Not that I’m worried about speed right now, but are there any better free alternatives? Is there a go-to app every programmer should use?
I think VS Code is the best choice for new developers because it’s the most widely used. Most tutorials cater to it and many tools are optimized for it.
Nova said:
I started out programming with VSCode. Not that I’m worried about speed right now, but are there any better free alternatives? Is there a go-to app every programmer should use?
It depends on what you mean by ‘better’. Emacs and (Neo)Vim are also very solid options. They’ve been around for decades and represent great engineering. Emacs, for instance, is one of the largest open-source repositories with around 200k commits on its core alone, not even counting the plugins. Hard to beat decades of expertise and innovation.
But those editors are quite different from typical software you might be used to. Learning them is a distinct skill you’ll need to develop. Is it worth it? That’s subjective. I spend hours daily in my editor, so fine-tuning it to my needs is vital for me. Many developers stick to tools like VSCode (or previously Atom or Sublime Text), and that’s perfectly fine too. Additionally, the fact that both Emacs and Vim have lasted longer than many other editors gives me confidence they’ll still be in use for years to come. Who knows if VSCode will still be around in 5 or 10 years (consider what happened to Atom or even Sublime)?
@Vic
But who cares if VS Code disappears? What do you really lose? It all boils down to memorizing shortcuts and getting used to them. If a new editor takes over VS Code, I’m sure you’ll be able to tweak the shortcuts and adapt back to your routine. If you depend on clicking everywhere, you might struggle, but then again, Emacs and Vim probably aren’t for you.
Well, it’s neither fast nor great, but those other apps you’re comparing it to are pretty bad. Still, I’m interested to see how much faster (or not) VSCode could have been if built with Tauri.
I’m not a web dev, but I thought the struggle was with Electron being not optimized for the OS as compared to native apps like dotnet or swift.
Honestly, desktop software these days is kind of crummy too. For instance, I noticed Thunderbird uses more RAM than my Roundcube webmail with several plugins. Sure, Roundcube does some server-side processing, but still. The UI feels much snappier, and Thunderbird used to be the gold standard for fast email clients.
I started with Sublime Text years ago, and it performed so well that I switched back as soon as I tried to use VSCode.
VSCode’s great for its debugging features though.
It might be a custom build that’s optimized or just really skilled engineers. But even with 16GB of RAM, it can’t manage my TypeScript project. The TS server frequently runs out of RAM.
Teo said:
It might be a custom build that’s optimized or just really skilled engineers. But even with 16GB of RAM, it can’t manage my TypeScript project. The TS server frequently runs out of RAM.
That’s an issue with the TS server; language servers work separately from Electron.
As an aside, using union types can slow down the TS server because it has to calculate many variations.
@Shannon
Or it could be due to excessive type inference.
I created a simple to-do app with Hono and its typed client, and the TS server struggled to keep up. Even after the Honor proposed inference optimizations, there was a notable delay after I pressed ‘dot’ before IntelliSense responded. This was for an app with 8 endpoints (for auth and todos). I can’t even imagine it working well for any real applications.