this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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And yet, the most popular, and desired (and one of the most admired) IDEs that developers use all day, everyday, is built using Electron:
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology/#2-integrated-development-environment
~~vscode isn't an IDE, but an actual IDE written in electron would be horrible.~~
I don't want to argue about this anymore. I admit i had a bad take, and this whole thread is just arguing about semantics at this point. Does it even really matter if vscode is an IDE or not? If it works, it works.
It's literally listed in stack overflow's section on IDEs, and functions as a replacement for an IDE. Insisting that it's not an IDE in this context isnt helping anyone communicate, it's just being pedantic.
They also list vim and notepad++ as IDEs, pretty sure they just meant code editors in general.
Fucking NANO is on the list 😂
With enough plugins vim can have almost all of the features of an ide. Not that I recommend using it like that tho.
What functionality is Vscode lacking for it to be an IDE?
IDEs come bundled with tooling, such as debuggers, intelligent code completion, and OOTB language support, and language servers.
vscode out of the box doesn't have any of these, you install them with plugins. jetbrains products, for example would be IDEs, but editors like vscode and neovim aren't. Those are code editors.
What’s different between Vscode and other editors like Vim is how easy it is to make it a fully fledged IDE. Usually a notification pops up about analyzers being available, and if you click accept it’s done. Just one click of a button.
With Vim it’s not that easy. You need to install many separate plugins just to make it a fraction of an IDE.
I agree. I was mainly thinking of neovim, but i guess vim works in this example, too.
I was talking about the base editor itself, though. In the end it doesn't even matter what we consider VSCode to be, i feel this thread has just devolved into arguing about semantics and bikeshedding, and there's no correct solution.
I think i'll just be deleting my main comment, admit I had a bad take and move on. i'm tired of arguing about this.
Seems unnecessarily pedantic 🤷
I don't think it really matters, but the implication you can write a whole IDE in electron is just insane.
It is pretty pedantic, i agree. I don't want to start an argument about something as pointless as this, though.
But aren't the plugins also basically part of the electron app after installing? But I have no idea how electron, vscode and their plugins acrually work.
Not really. there's VSCode itself, and then there's the extensions on top of it. But my main point was how vscode wasn't designed to be an IDE, just a customizable code editor. Like neovim or emacs, you could customize it to the point of being similar to an IDE, but they're still not considered IDEs.
So if I ship a version of vscode with a few extensions pre installed I can call it an ide?
Integrated you mean? Into the development environment? 😉
Fuck, you got me there.
You could call vscode a "DIY IDE Building Kit" because everybody is using it that way.
After you put all the extensions together you basically got a fully featured "IDE" for most languages out there.
Nobody I know uses vscode like a simple "code editor".
I agree, neither do i. I was talking about base vscode, but i don't think it even matters anymore. There's really no proper answer. Some people use it like a notepad, some people use it like a fully fledged IDE. I'm just tired of arguing over this, and i admit i had a bad take.
I think that whether it needs plugins or not to do the job isn’t really relevant.
You can develop software in a large number of languages including writing the code (with intelligent code completion), building it, committing it to source control and running and debugging it.
If it didn’t use plugins to do that then it’d huge and take ages to start up.
I didn't mean it in a bad way. I prefer how vscode does it. and i think you're right.
Being good
Fuck M$
This distinction is not useful since the creation of language servers.
I'm keeping an eye on Zed: https://zed.dev/
Yeah, AI, whatever. It's written in Rust and looks pretty great.
Yeah you can turn off the AI it's not mandatory, besides, it's really fast, has built in support for LSP's , custom themes which are easy to make, vim mode out of the box, extensions, and some GitHub functionalities.
I was using Kate because electron is too much of a hog on my system and zed works insanely well (it's slightly slower than Kate though but not very important)
I wish you could turn off the automatic downloads on zed though (or have a prompt to confirm the download) but it's really shaping up to be a great text editor.
I'm currently mid-migration from Windows to Linux, so I have to wait until the Windows release or until I finish migrating (I'm not really up for building a beta at this point), but I'm very excited.
It's not done, but I've replaced VSCode and haven't felt the need to come back, moreover If I were to go back I'd miss Zed because it's just that good.
Like it feels so light and fast 🤤
Did Zed devs fix vim mode? In the early stages I tried it and lots of movements weren't the same as in vim, I still remember trying to jump a few screen down and it just deleted a few lines instead. Also didn't really like that you couldn't controll the menu on the left using vim movements like you can with vimtree, really makes it unusable if you have to jump around between your mouse and keyboard. Gotta check it myself I guess, hopefully they made it better
So you tried to move a few screens down and accidentally deleted a few lines?
I don't know what you're talking about, to me it sounds like they've perfectly nailed the vim experience!
I pressed Ctrl+d a few times and it deleted a few lines instead. Ctrl d and Ctrl u are used for travelling half-screen down and up. That's right, you don't know what I'm talking about and still spewing bullshit. *.world checks out.
Oh my god buddy, it was a joke. Breathe.
Why is Spacemacs listed separately to Emacs when it's just a fancy Emacs' config?