[HN Gopher] Web IDE Beta
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Web IDE Beta
        
       Author : notpushkin
       Score  : 249 points
       Date   : 2022-12-21 08:53 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (docs.gitlab.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (docs.gitlab.com)
        
       | WFHRenaissance wrote:
       | I've been using a web IDE in Gitlab for months... what changed?
        
         | john_cogs wrote:
         | GitLab team member here.
         | 
         | We released a beta version of our new Web IDE which is built
         | using VS Code. The new Web IDE will provide users access to
         | more features, improved performance, and the ability to
         | securely connect to a remote development environment directly
         | from the Web IDE.
        
           | jamisonbryant wrote:
           | With all due respect (big GitLab fan here) there are at least
           | two features that are missing that for me makes this product
           | unusable:
           | 
           | 1. Inability to switch branches in the editor [0]
           | 
           | 2. Full project search "to be enabled at a later date"
           | 
           | So I can't switch branches off of the default branch and I
           | can't search the entire project. To me, this undermines your
           | claim that the new web IDE "will provide users access to more
           | features" and in fact I don't find it useful for hardly
           | anything in its current state.
           | 
           | I get that it's a beta, but it seems a very incomplete one,
           | at best.
           | 
           | [0]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-web-ide/-/issues/72
        
             | john_cogs wrote:
             | Appreciate the feedback.
             | 
             | A link to the Epic for full project search[0] was shared in
             | an earlier comment[1] by Eric, the Product Manager who is
             | leading this effort. You can follow along there to track
             | our progress.
             | 
             | In the meantime, you can disable the beta and continue to
             | use the old Web IDE until all of the features you require
             | are available[2].
             | 
             | [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34080388
             | 
             | [1] - https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/9466
             | 
             | [2] - https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide_beta/
             | index.h...
        
               | jamisonbryant wrote:
               | Thanks, I've enabled notifications on all the linked
               | issues/epics. Eagerly anticipating the next release.
        
             | milohax wrote:
             | GitLab Support team member here.
             | 
             | As a work-around, if you know the name of the existing
             | branch you want to switch to, you can change the URL in
             | your browser's location bar for the IDE. Here's the URL
             | format:                   https://gitlab.com/-/ide/project/
             | <namespace>/[<subgroup>/...]<project>/edit/<branch>/-/
             | 
             | This will re-load the IDE on the different branch.
             | 
             | You can also switch branches in the GitLab UI's Files view,
             | before launching the Web IDE with the "Web IDE" button (or
             | the `.` shortcut).
             | 
             | Also pressing "Web IDE" from an MR in GitLab will open that
             | MR's branch in the Web IDE.
             | 
             | So it depends upon your workflow currently, but I agree it
             | will be nice to be able to swap within the IDE itself later
             | (also when the GitLab Flow extension is added).
             | 
             | The built-in git support in Code is already an improvement
             | over the old Web IDE's Stage/Commit workflow, IMHO, and
             | after the first load, the new Web IDE also loads faster
             | than the old one, for me at least.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | > improved performance
           | 
           | Huh, that's surprising but probably good. My initial reaction
           | on reading that you were replacing your own thing with VSC
           | was something like "aw, now it'll be too slow to use". Hope
           | you're right:)
        
       | jenny91 wrote:
       | I wish Gitlab would just fix up their existing product instead of
       | increasing the surface area. Every month they put out a security
       | release that often contains a couple of "high severity" bugs and
       | every couple of months there's a "critical" one. And they're not
       | rocket science either, simple auth check bypasses and so on.
       | Clearly something's not going right in the culture if you have
       | multiple critical security bugs every year.
       | 
       | I am increasingly antsy about hosting my private Gitlab instance
       | on the web, and this does not reduce that.
        
         | zachruss92 wrote:
         | I got burned so many times by GitLab I can't in good conscience
         | use them anymore. I always try to use an OSS product when I
         | can, but I literally lost a client a few years back because we
         | couldn't do a deploy because GL was down. For now I use GH for
         | critical projects and a self hosted Gitea instance when it's
         | not super critical.
        
           | AlexErrant wrote:
           | To be fair, Github actions has a spotty record as well.
           | https://www.githubstatus.com/history
        
           | choward wrote:
           | One of the benefits of gitlab is you can host it yourself.
           | Github has also had outages.
        
       | kayson wrote:
       | Curious if anyone has gotten a remote extension (MS or otherwise)
       | working on vscodium. I tried but could never get it working so I
       | reluctantly switched to vscode proper.
        
       | rkagerer wrote:
       | I bet this eventually evolves into something like "VB for the
       | modern web" where you go to the website, just start coding, and
       | all the heavy-lifting of app hosting is taken care of for you.
       | Next up, a visual point-and-draw editor.
        
         | holografix wrote:
         | How realistic is it to move to the Jetbrains light weight
         | editor crm VSCode?
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | That sort of already exists in AWS, where Lambda allows you to
         | just write business logic inside the browser without having to
         | worry anything about hosting, and Step Functions allows you to
         | do drag-and-drop various other AWS services into a state
         | machine. Granted, I'm not sure how much utility you can derive
         | from Step Functions if you also don't write Lambda functions.
        
           | psnehanshu wrote:
           | But the interface is very cumbersome. Not very productive. To
           | be productive as a developer, you need a lot of other things
           | that VS code provides, but not the Lambda editor.
        
         | quickthrower2 wrote:
         | Glitch.com is the close to this (not the visual part).
         | 
         | Divjoy and others have a nice drag/drop - there are variants on
         | this theme.
         | 
         | Maybe someone can bring this all together.
         | 
         | Kind of like "nocode-at-first-but-really-there-is-code-if-you-
         | need-to-edit-it"
         | 
         | Or as you say: VB.
         | 
         | Or better: Access for the modern web.
        
           | samwillis wrote:
           | Glitch is awesome, however it seems somewhat neglected. I
           | know it's geared towards Node development, but last I looked
           | earlier this year it was still on Python 3.6.
           | 
           | Other than that it provides the best experience of being able
           | to throw up demos and allow people to fork and modify them.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | This already exists for a while in the enterprise space, see
         | stuff like OutSystems for example.
         | 
         | Or Microsoft's Power Apps.
        
         | jug wrote:
         | Also, don't forget a whole slew of AI assisted coding and
         | design features.
        
       | user3939382 wrote:
       | I tried the JetBrains remote IDE, it was awful. Sad since I'm
       | sure it was amazingly hard to get to that point and they poured a
       | lot into it. There's just so many resources and so much process
       | tied to the local environment outside the IDE, this was light
       | years away from making sense. I'm keeping an open mind, though,
       | maybe some day.
        
         | berkle4455 wrote:
         | Try VSCode Remote, works wonders and simply.
        
           | nightski wrote:
           | This is one area I'll never jump ship. I like developing the
           | code I write on a local machine. If some day in the distant
           | future we are required to use cloud servers to develop, I'm
           | out. Done. Adios.
        
             | wilsonnb3 wrote:
             | What's the issue with developing on cloud servers?
             | 
             | Computing on a remote computer has a rich history going
             | back to the terminals of the 60s and 70s and has never
             | really gone out of style.
             | 
             | VSCode is just the latest iteration.
        
             | berkle4455 wrote:
             | I prefer the remote setup because my dev machines are
             | nearly identical to the production machines in every
             | aspect. I can have a fresh new machine online in minutes,
             | so can the rest of my team, or a new hire. All our code
             | runs close to the data. My dev instance is significantly
             | more powerful than my laptop. I switch between a desktop
             | and laptop across a given day but my dev box doesn't
             | change.
             | 
             | I'm not sold on the "in a browser" setup that this post is
             | selling, I still run VSCode natively and also use it for my
             | terminal shell.
        
             | acdha wrote:
             | Why is your position so absolute? There are trade-offs and
             | as engineers we typically would balance those -- for
             | example, local development avoids putting the network in
             | the critical path while remote development allows perfect
             | fidelity with your deployment environment, can be an
             | important security win[1], and could make it easier to
             | access resources which you don't have enough space or want
             | to store locally.
             | 
             | Neither of those is right or wrong globally: your
             | particular situation will determine how much you weight
             | each of them.
             | 
             | 1. e.g. if you install the wrong Node module, it can still
             | wreak havoc on your remote environment but it can't steal
             | your local credentials, trojan your workstation, or attack
             | your other projects -- and by splitting your credentials
             | from the remote environment's you can usually run with a
             | far more restricted set of permissions.
        
       | oblio wrote:
       | Interesting, I think several websites are doing this.
       | 
       | I wonder if at some point VS Code will add some enterprise
       | editions, these feel like the perfect place to do it.
        
         | epolanski wrote:
         | I think the biggest risk for those companies (see GitPod who
         | had multiple blog posts about it) is that the good parts of VSC
         | really are closed source or not MIT-licensed so you can't use
         | things like share or extensions and many others.
         | 
         | I think cloud vendors like gitlab and others should actually
         | work on rewriting or maintaining a different fork or write an
         | entirely different web editor altogether.
         | 
         | VSC is not a piece of competitor-friendly software and most
         | importantly it does not support mobile browsers so imho all
         | these companies are locking themselves in the past as the need
         | for mobile and tablet editing (even if limited) is going to
         | keep rising and they are not offering it.
        
           | easton wrote:
           | VSC does have reasonable support for tablet editing, there
           | was a big push to make it fully compatible with Safari on the
           | iPad when Codespaces was first in beta. You're right about
           | mobile though, it's a nightmare.
        
             | oblio wrote:
             | Do people do that much code editing on their phone, though?
             | 
             | People don't really optimize for 0.001% of use cases.
        
               | josephd79 wrote:
               | deadlines are for real...
        
           | TAForObvReasons wrote:
           | VSCodium, aka VSCode without the Microsoft proprietary bits,
           | uses https://open-vsx.org/ as the extension registry. The
           | hard problem is convincing devs to cross-publish
        
             | andrew_ wrote:
             | I have a few extensions, notably an update to subtle-
             | brackets, which I cross-published. It's relatively painless
             | - Eclipse running Open VSX is clunky, but no more clunky
             | and UX-weird than the marketplace (which holy shit, talk
             | about terrible UX). The issue is that VSCodium has holes,
             | and not all extensions will run correctly.
             | 
             | I'd like to see a hard fork for VSCodium, where the
             | community could make UX/DX upgrades that VSCode's
             | Microsoft-employed gatekeepers have summarily shut down
             | time and time again (see: issues on the find/replace
             | dialogs)
        
             | dromtrund wrote:
             | I have published some extensions with about 300k users in
             | total. So far, I've only had two people ask me to publish
             | on open-vsx. I did make one attempt, but something broke in
             | the signup procedure, and it took 3 weeks for someone from
             | support to come back to me with a fix, so I had moved on.
             | 
             | If more people were asking for it, I would try again, but
             | the time spent per user to set up a pipeline for each
             | extension just doesn't make sense at the moment. I'd rather
             | spend those nights adding features for the existing
             | mainline users. Cynical perhaps, but there's no reward for
             | making extensions, so there's a limited amount of time I
             | can spend on it.
        
         | lozenge wrote:
         | They have one, it's called GitHub Codespaces. (Remember, nobody
         | wants to sell software any more, only services).
         | 
         | Microsoft's strategy is to build a moat around VS Code/GitHub.
         | Compared to GitLab, they have:
         | 
         | * Brand recognition of VS Code
         | 
         | * VS Code extension gallery that only VS Code can connect to
         | 
         | * Buttons in the Desktop version of VS Code to connect to
         | GitHub Codespaces, Azure etc
         | 
         | * MS-written closed source extensions- Pylance, parts of
         | OmniSharp, Remote SSH, Remote Containers, Remote WSL, Live
         | Share, GitHub Copilot, IntelliCode, Python WASM In the Browser,
         | GitHub Codespaces integration.
         | 
         | * Control over the VS Code API. They can add just the
         | functionality their extensions need and nothing more.
         | 
         | * They own the LSP specs. They can add just the functionality
         | that VS Code implements and nothing more.
         | 
         | * Control over the VS Code "proposed" API. If you want to use
         | these APIs in your extension, you have to be whitelisted by
         | Microsoft (or ask users to install a non-VS Code version of VS
         | Code). Gitlab can offer a Web IDE, they can't offer integration
         | with desktop VS Code to provide those nice features like
         | desktop-level keyboard shortcuts, Git Clone, compare with
         | working tree, etc as that would use the "proposed" APIs.
        
           | maegul wrote:
           | This. We need to remember this if we're to use VS Code and
           | any of their LSPs.
        
           | lozenge wrote:
           | Right, I just realised the GitLab Web IDE is running fully in
           | the browser, so there is no Terminal. Maybe they are
           | considering a later version which is more like Codespaces,
           | letting you develop and run your code, keeping the browser as
           | the user interface.
        
             | oblio wrote:
             | https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide_beta/#known
             | -...
        
               | lioeters wrote:
               | > Known issues
               | 
               | > The Web Terminal and Live Preview are not available in
               | the Web IDE Beta.
               | 
               | > These features may become available at a later date.
        
             | eschurter wrote:
             | Hi, GitLab PM for the Web IDE and Remote Development here!
             | You're right, the Web IDE itself is running fully in the
             | browser, but if you try to open a new Terminal panel you'll
             | see that it can be configured to connect to a remote host.
             | The setup (for now) requires a bit of manual config on your
             | end but we're working on making that easier in the future!
             | 
             | This blog post gives a little more high level overview of
             | the current functionality and where we're headed:
             | https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2022/12/15/get-ready-for-
             | new-g...
             | 
             | For a deeper dive you can check out our Remote Development
             | [direction page](https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/
             | editor/remote_deve...) and [documentation](https://docs.git
             | lab.com/ee/user/project/remote_development/)
        
       | Hamuko wrote:
       | "Only results from opened files are shown. Full project search to
       | be enabled at a later date."
       | 
       | Rather useless at the moment. I at least can't really work around
       | in a codebase without project search.
        
         | perryizgr8 wrote:
         | Github had the same limitation initially but they have fixed it
         | lately. It downloads an index in the browser and uses it for
         | search. I guess Gitlab can do the same, they just didn't get
         | around to implementing it in the first version.
        
           | eschurter wrote:
           | GitLab PM for the Web IDE here. You're right! You can follow
           | our progress in https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-
           | org/-/epics/9466
        
       | kavalerov wrote:
       | This looks really great, and nice to see both Github and Gitlab
       | moving in this direction - ability to have IDE in the browser is
       | great for many use-cases.
       | 
       | However, I am a bit worried that it looks like most of these
       | companies and up using VSCode. It really needs to have a good
       | competitor in this space, and I hope JetBrains can match that
       | eventually with partnerships of their own.
        
         | nabaraz wrote:
         | For what's its worth, I've not moved away from Sublime Text. I
         | hope it stays competitive for the foreseeable future.
        
         | mikro2nd wrote:
         | Interestingly, Netbeans (though strongly Java focussed at the
         | time) once had a fantastic collaborative coding plugin at one
         | time, based on XMPP. It got killed because Sun wanted to foist
         | their own "via Sun servers" thing on everybody. Needless to
         | say, _both_ solutions died on the vine. How sad.
         | 
         | Browser-based BS... I'm never going to buy it. Personal
         | prediction (contact me if you're willing to put Swiss money on
         | it; I am!) - in 5 to 8 years' time the pendulum will be
         | swinging back to device-/locally-hosted apps because of
         | $unforeseen-issues. And fashion.
        
           | endtime wrote:
           | I don't know what will happen to it as a public consumer
           | product, but Google's internal browser-based hosted VS Code
           | (Cider V) is great.
        
         | morelisp wrote:
         | JetBrains seems to be forging ahead with their own Space
         | project and not trying to partner too closely with any existing
         | forge. They seem to understand "IDE-in-browser" undermines
         | their fundamental market position; they need to make people not
         | need the browser in the first place, to retain it.
        
           | canadianfella wrote:
        
           | mgkimsal wrote:
           | Would be sorta nice if their 'issue tracking' functionality
           | in their IDEs would support... Space itself.
        
           | vladvasiliu wrote:
           | > They seem to understand "IDE-in-browser" undermines their
           | fundamental market position
           | 
           | How so?
           | 
           | They've recently rolled out the "gateway" product, which is
           | basically a remote IDE. Sure, you still connect to that with
           | a local one, but the local one doesn't do that much. Why not
           | move it to a browser? The remote one does all the things
           | people love about their IDEs. And if people don't care,
           | they're probably not using their products anyway.
           | 
           | The only issue I'd have with a browser, is that I usually use
           | Vim keybindings, which I've never seen well implemented. My
           | favorite being the window intercepting ^W.
        
             | zamalek wrote:
             | There's actually a few products.
             | 
             | Gateway is a remote IDE in the browser, it's a rewrite of
             | their front-end (Spring I think?) to marshal the UI over
             | HTTP.
             | 
             | Remote is similar to VSCode. The IDE is split into a front-
             | end and a backend: the UI stuff happens locally, and does
             | RPC to the backend for file access, terminal, language
             | server, what-not.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | btown wrote:
           | JetBrains' fundamental market position is that companies pay
           | per seat for an it-just-works IDE. So if anything, IDE-in-
           | browser, where code is executing on a hosted backend, is even
           | more aligned with this.
           | 
           | The real question is whether they can execute on this. Will
           | they be able to replicate years of VS Code's work on
           | providing UI extensibility without sacrificing performance,
           | with a team that historically had been JVM rather than JS/TS
           | experts? Will they be able to build the right abstractions to
           | allow for temporary network outages and all the distributed-
           | systems challenges that come with that? It's quite a moonshot
           | to get to the level that people expect of VS Code, especially
           | as Microsoft has access to relatively-limitless capital in
           | ways that JetBrains, which has not taken outside investment,
           | does not.
        
             | theptip wrote:
             | I'm confused by this comment. Why do they need to move to
             | browser-based JS/TS?
             | 
             | Their existing toolchain is all about doing everything in
             | the IDE. (Remote dev envs, code review, all of it).
             | 
             | Am I missing something? I haven't seen anything which
             | suggests they are going down the path you refer to here. A
             | local client they own is their differentiator over the
             | browser, why would they abandon that?
        
               | tomnipotent wrote:
               | > Am I missing something?
               | 
               | Fleet (https://www.jetbrains.com/fleet/).
               | 
               | They're building a distributed IDE. A web-based UI would
               | fit nicely into their new roadmap.
        
               | theptip wrote:
               | I dunno, most of the stuff in Fleet looks to me like it
               | benefits from being a native thin-client rather than a
               | browser-based app (e.g. SSH to your remotes, run the
               | language server locally, etc).
               | 
               | I can see that a web-UI option could be built atop the
               | "Space-hosted everything" architecture they are putting
               | together, but I don't see any evidence that's actually
               | what their core strategy is, as GP suggested. They spend
               | a bunch of time discussing running things on "Your
               | machine" too, which doesn't sound like a browser-first
               | strategy.
               | 
               | As I see it, their secret sauce is building client-side
               | applications that are faster than other companies can
               | build. I just don't see them giving up that performance
               | edge to make a browser-based client their primary
               | strategy.
        
         | nigamanth wrote:
         | JetBrains gives products in very niche areas. WebStorm for JS,
         | PHPStorm for PHP, RubyMine for Ruby, and GoLand for GoLang.
         | 
         | Visual Studio Code is used by people who like to many
         | languages, but more specifically for someone who's job is to
         | work with JavaScript then WebStorm is much better. JetBrains
         | could very well combine all these IDEs into one, but then again
         | think about the amount of space and data of this new IDE.
        
           | chronofar wrote:
           | Aside from the newly introduced Fleet the other commenter
           | pointed out, Jetbrains' IDEA Ultimate can include all the
           | functionality of all the individual niche products (via
           | plugins), so you could just use a single Jetbrains IDE for
           | most any language/flow you choose. I personally kind of like
           | to keep them separate so I can keep different envs configured
           | the way I most often use them, but you could just use the
           | single IDE for all.
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | No you can't, because JetBrains refuses to have Clion
             | plugins into InteliJ, it is the only Java IDE that doesn't
             | support mixed language development.
        
               | perrylaj wrote:
               | C/C++ is only 'one language' (I know, but for sake of
               | this discussion, may as well be), and even then, Intellij
               | does just fine for me, even if it's not on par with
               | Clion. To say it doesn't support mixed language
               | development is silly. In one sizeable project I have
               | python, js, TS, kotlin, Java, bash, groovy, even a little
               | C. All of it works in Intellij ultimate with code
               | completion, refactoring, goto definition, find usages,
               | etc. And it does it does better and faster than the same
               | project when attempting to use VSCode. VSCode starts
               | getting real slow trying to find references and whatnot
               | on significant size projects, and the refactoring is
               | night and day better in Intellij.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Since when does InteliJ support JNI debugging?!?
               | 
               | Android Studio's C++ support is done by Google's own
               | licensed CLion for integrating it into a proper
               | development experience.
        
             | Cthulhu_ wrote:
             | I thought it was weird when Jetbrains started to split up
             | their product into language-specific products, but given
             | how many people say they use WebStorm or an other niche
             | product, and who say they use multiple, I can't blame
             | Jetbrains - I think that in hindsight it was a great
             | business move. An expensive "I can do everything" product
             | has a higher barrier to entry than a specialized product.
             | 
             | Personally I've been using Ultimate on and off over the
             | years, since I've never really stuck to any one language;
             | at my previous job it was a mix of PHP / JS (Dojo), Go,
             | Typescript, and sometimes (reading) C code which didn't
             | quite work right in Ultimate.
             | 
             | VS Code can do all that too, but only intellij was able to
             | actually help me with stuff - things like set the version
             | of PHP to 5.2 so it warns me if I tried to use the PHP 5.3
             | array shorthand. (I did not choose PHP by the way and the
             | project was to replace it)
        
               | mdaniel wrote:
               | > I thought it was weird when Jetbrains started to split
               | up their product into language-specific products
               | 
               | They're for different audiences; the hurdle of trying to
               | explain to a JS dev "yeah, I know when it starts up it
               | asks for a Maven/Gradle/JVM, but just ignore that and
               | open a directory after you install the following 8
               | plugins" is bad DX. As others have said, the standalone
               | products are not feature parity with the IJ plugins. I
               | have _no idea_ why that is, or what incentives are
               | driving that, but for the time being it is what it is
        
             | brabel wrote:
             | Can confirm... IDEA Ultimate (and Community to a lesser
             | extent) lets me write code in Java, Groovy, Kotlin (and
             | with slightly fewer features, but still really good
             | support), Go, Rust, JavaScript, TypeScript, and of course,
             | HTML/CSS... probably more but those are what I normally
             | use.
             | 
             | VS Code is getting support for all the newer languages
             | though... similar to how it used to be before with Eclipse
             | (for those who remember the multitude of Eclipse-based IDEs
             | for niche uses in the 2000's) and emacs (which still gets
             | support for most esoteric langs, even if half baked, pretty
             | quickly)... for example, I can use Zig in both emacs and VS
             | Code, but not IntelliJ (I think they are writing one , but
             | it was really unusable when I last checked it out). And
             | stuff like Julia, Common Lisp.... I tend to go to emacs for
             | those... but apparently supporting VS Code is high priority
             | for even these languages nowadays.
        
           | bastawhiz wrote:
           | > Visual Studio Code is used by people who like to many
           | languages
           | 
           | I don't like these language. I'm forced to write them. I
           | didn't ask for terraform, typescript, CSS, HTML, yaml, xml,
           | JSON, and everything else.
           | 
           | > for someone who's job is to work with JavaScript then
           | WebStorm is much better
           | 
           | It's never been my experience that a full IDE is better for
           | dynamic interpreted languages. Maybe if you're used to that
           | from writing C# or Java it's nice, but I'll sooner take vi.
           | 
           | But like you said, thanks to lots of people that came before
           | me, I'm not just writing one language, I'm writing many.
           | Right now, I have tabs open with eight different languages. I
           | need something that's suitable at everything, not just one
           | language.
        
             | j-krieger wrote:
             | Have you ever tried .NET?
        
               | bastawhiz wrote:
               | I grew up writing VB6 and moved to VS .Net 2003. In
               | college I happily wrote C# in vim.
        
             | lallysingh wrote:
             | Try pycharm. It does fantastic error checking that you'd
             | normally need to test the code for. For example, it will
             | infer types for variables and then highlight lines that
             | will cause problems at runtime. It's saved me days of
             | testing the first week I used it.
        
               | hackertyper69 wrote:
               | does pycharm work with C++ and VHDL?
        
               | lallysingh wrote:
               | No, it's python-specific. I was responding to parent's
               | remark on dynamic languages. C++ is reasonably well
               | served by CLion. I don't know what works for VHDL.
        
               | bastawhiz wrote:
               | I already use mypy with vscode for Python. The type
               | checker is the same one that runs in CI.
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | Sorry, what happened to `vi`?
        
               | bastawhiz wrote:
               | I use it when it makes sense. My point is that on the
               | spectrum of IDE <--> text editor, I'd much rather take
               | the text editor than the IDE. The performance and ease of
               | use of a simple text editor vastly dominates whatever
               | convenience(s) the IDE claims to provide. Vscode is my
               | usually my daily driver, as it's fast, has effective
               | built-in refactoring tools, and has a decent plugin
               | ecosystem.
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | Nothing? It's a good text editor, but it's not an IDE
        
             | dmitriid wrote:
             | > It's never been my experience that a full IDE is better
             | for dynamic interpreted languages.
             | 
             | IntelliJ IDEs are very good at figuring out dynamic
             | languages, but on top of that they also know a lot of
             | tooling and frameworks. So even if you have dynamic Python,
             | but use it in Django, IDEA/PyCharm will be able to give you
             | completions, code navigation, and refactoring just by the
             | virtue of knowing what goes where in Django.
        
               | bastawhiz wrote:
               | I get that from vscode and pylance/mypy already. I get
               | the same thing with vscode and sorbet for Ruby. Why would
               | I go through all the trouble of using IntelliJ for that?
        
               | dmitriid wrote:
               | For everything listed in the "Working with source code"
               | menu: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/working-
               | with-source-c... (and others like
               | https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/web-
               | frameworks.html)
               | 
               | Some of it made its way into VS Code, but many things
               | definitely didn't (because they require more than just
               | LSP and reuire someone to write a bunch of analysis tools
               | for the python integration).
        
           | rzzzt wrote:
           | Have I got news for you!
           | https://blog.jetbrains.com/fleet/2022/10/introducing-the-
           | fle...
        
             | wolletd wrote:
             | I've seen Fleet in my JB Toolbox, but haven't touched it
             | yet.
             | 
             | But it is the obvious move. All the current JB IDEs are
             | built upon the same basic IntelliJ platform, anyway.
             | 
             | It's "only" a matter of restructuring all that to have only
             | one IDE where you can opt-in to support specific languages
             | and now you have something like VSCode.
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | You already have that with Idea, with a few exceptions
               | (C/C++, and possibly C#).
               | 
               | You can install the Python plugin & friends -> PyCharm
               | 
               | You can install the Go plugin -> Goland
               | 
               | Etc
        
               | notpushkin wrote:
               | I'm not sure why, but nobody I know uses this setup -
               | everybody has 2-3 separate IDEs (one for backend, one for
               | frontend etc).
               | 
               | The initial reason behind having separate IDEs for every
               | language, or so I was told, was using different
               | keybindings. This way, XCode users could easily switch to
               | AppCode, Visual Studio users - to Rider etc. - without
               | the need to re-learn anything. (This is the reason I
               | still have Atom keybindings in my Codium setup.)
               | 
               | But why would anyone want to use different IDEs with
               | different keybindings is a complete mystery to me.
        
               | abhijat wrote:
               | I may be mistaken but AFAIK plugins are not always at
               | feature parity with the full jetbrains IDEs. For example
               | the rust plugin in intellij did not support debugging but
               | the one in CLion did (I think this is fixed now).
               | 
               | The python plugin in intellij was a little inferior to
               | Pycharm for Django (pycharm had deeper support for the
               | django ORM) and so on.
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | I think the reason for the difference between clion and
               | idea for the rust plugin is that clion seems somehow
               | different "on a lower level". It still has support for
               | profiling and valgrind, which Idea lacks [0].
               | 
               | Regarding Django, do you have some examples? I'm
               | admittedly not a hardcore Django user, but I haven't seen
               | any difference between the two.
               | 
               | [0] https://github.com/intellij-rust/intellij-
               | rust#compatible-id...
        
               | iudqnolq wrote:
               | Like my sibling described there are weird quirks. The
               | bigger problem is that this isn't a well documented and
               | supported path. And if you wanted to spend time fiddling
               | with my IDE you wouldn't be using Jetbrains.
        
               | ilikehurdles wrote:
               | That's absurd! I've used the same IDEA Ultimate instance
               | for all languages I touch. Often 3 in the same project.
               | Haven't seen the point of having separate
               | IDEA/Webstorm/Pycharm instances when one delivers all the
               | functionality of the others.
               | 
               | I'm looking forward to Fleet, watching it closely. But it
               | still has some kinks preventing me from adopting it. Once
               | they polish up the elixir-ls integration I'll give it a
               | serious shot.
        
               | j-krieger wrote:
               | This is only for most surface level features. The Idea
               | PyCharm plugins lack scientific mode for example.
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | What do you mean by "scientific modes"? Jupyter
               | notebooks?
               | 
               | I've never used that, so I don't know what it is exactly
               | nor how to compare. But, although the product comparison
               | page [0] says idea lacks it, there's a doc page that says
               | it has it [1]. It also shows up in the settings window of
               | my IdeaU with Python plugin.
               | 
               | According to this other comparison page [2], it would
               | actually seem that the Idea plugin does _more_ than
               | Pycharm.
               | 
               | [0] https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?product=i
               | dea&pro...
               | 
               | [1] https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/jupyter-notebook-
               | support...
               | 
               | [2] https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/articles/PY-A-44237640
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | andrew_ wrote:
         | The way that VS Code is spreading, and the stranglehold
         | Microsoft has on development and direction of the product, give
         | me very strong IE4/5/6 vibes. I really hope some of the open
         | source alternatives that aren't corporation-controlled gain
         | traction over the next year.
        
           | RunSet wrote:
           | > I really hope some of the open source alternatives that
           | aren't corporation-controlled gain traction over the next
           | year.
           | 
           | Shout out to CodeLite.
           | 
           | https://codelite.org/
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodeLite
        
             | I_complete_me wrote:
             | I randomly typed in the word "lines" into a pacman search
             | and discovered the existence of the lines IDE [0]. Never
             | heard it mentioned anywhere before. I know nothing about
             | it, I was just experimenting with pacman search out of
             | boredom.
             | 
             | [0] https://www.creatixbih.com/lines/
        
           | tomjen3 wrote:
           | There is a difference, and that is that you can use something
           | like Jetbrains and your coworker can use VSCode with issues,
           | but if 99% of people use a browser that renders HTML/CSS
           | differently (and I will argue better than the competition at
           | the time) then you are forced to acquiesce to it.
        
           | mminer237 wrote:
           | Unlike IE, VS Code is open source though. If Microsoft does
           | some terrible thing with VS Code, the community can just
           | switch to VSCodium: https://vscodium.com/
        
             | djbusby wrote:
             | Can? The time to support FOSS is now.
        
               | thiht wrote:
               | Which Visual Studio Code is.
        
               | pionar wrote:
               | It's not. VSC is a packaged version of the open-source
               | code with proprietary bits added. Integration with the
               | plugin marketplace, telemetry, etc. VSCodium does not
               | have that.
               | 
               | In addition, a lot of the good language plugins are
               | proprietary, like PyLance and the C# plugin.
        
               | cstejerean wrote:
               | So it's time for the community to step up and write good
               | (or even better) versions of those plugins?
               | 
               | On the one hand sure I wish Microsoft open sourced more,
               | at the same time what they already open sourced is a
               | fantastic foundation for building upon.
               | 
               | Instead of having to write an open source IDE from
               | scratch we can leverage this one and then implement a few
               | plugins for popular languages.
        
               | LordDragonfang wrote:
               | > Integration with the plugin marketplace
               | 
               | This is a big one. A lot of the value of VSCode comes
               | from its plugins, and M$ doesn't allow VSCodium to access
               | them.
        
               | thiht wrote:
               | https://open-vsx.org
               | 
               | https://open-vsx.org/extension/sugatoray/vscode-
               | remotework-e...
               | 
               | https://open-vsx.org/extension/ms-python/python
        
               | andrew_ wrote:
               | And vscode core isn't without its issues, it's not
               | straightforward to fork and build without running into
               | userspace issues:
               | https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues
        
               | joshmanders wrote:
               | You're just being pedantic now. VSCodium exists because
               | VSCode is FOSS.
               | 
               | Your complaint is with the binary that Microsoft ships,
               | not with the codebase.
        
               | morelisp wrote:
               | Sounds to me like they've got sufficient fanboy mindshare
               | to move fully into "extinguish" soon!
        
               | dijit wrote:
               | Parents complaint is that paying lip service to FOSS is
               | exactly the "extend" part of "Embrace, Extend,
               | Extinguish".
               | 
               | A mantra that was famously internally coined at
               | Microsoft[0], and was found during anti-monopoly
               | proceedings.
               | 
               | As such they will _always_ be looked at skeptically when
               | adding proprietary things to open source things.
               | 
               | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_e
               | xtinguis...
        
               | shkkmo wrote:
               | This doesn't really match since the "Embrace" part is
               | different.
               | 
               | The classic formula was "embracing" an established
               | standard, making proprietary extensions to that standard,
               | then using the adoption of those proprietary extensions
               | to extinguish the original standard's market share.
               | 
               | In this case, Microsoft didn't embrace an existing code
               | base or standard, they made one and open sourced it. What
               | would the analagous "extinction" bere here? That they
               | eventually stop releasing updates to VSCode as open
               | source?
               | 
               | While I agree that there is good reason to doubt
               | Microsoft's intention to be a good steward of an open
               | source project, this seems less like another iteration of
               | that playbook and more like what a lot of "open source"
               | for-profit companies do where they have an open core but
               | keep many features proprietary so they can't be easily
               | forked.
        
               | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
               | > What would the analagous "extinction" bere here?
               | 
               | Look at Android and how it is almost impossible to de-
               | Google it for a live demonstration.
               | 
               | (I don't think there is a market for developer tools,
               | though.)
        
               | shkkmo wrote:
               | There are several android distros that provide support
               | for a de-googled installation. Calling it "impossible"
               | seems like a bit of a stretch, though there are
               | definitely limitations, even with microg installed.
               | 
               | I do think that the VSCode model is much more similar to
               | the Android model (though Android is a more extreme
               | version of the model) than either is to the "Embrace,
               | Extend, Extinguish" model.
        
               | taeric wrote:
               | It is quite easy to see that the "embrace" is to release
               | a core into the open source world. They embraced the idea
               | of open source and released something, they extended the
               | user base into the world of the non-free option. The
               | thinking is if they can get a critical mass of folks onto
               | the option that is non-free, they will extinguish the
               | free option by no longer supporting it.
               | 
               | And this is not much different from the things they did
               | this with back in the day. Used to, you wouldn't target
               | open source, as much as you would student audience. The
               | battle used to be more over what corporate workforces
               | would want and use. The open source development scene
               | changed that a bit. Though, it is kind of... interesting
               | to consider how many tools and ideas have been lost in
               | that process.
        
               | shkkmo wrote:
               | > The thinking is if they can get a critical mass of
               | folks onto the option that is non-free, they will
               | extinguish the free option by no longer supporting it.
               | 
               | I assume you mean "non-free" as in speech, not beer,
               | since VSCode is free. Hasn't that "critical mass" been
               | the case since day one? I can't imagine that VSCodium
               | built binaries have ever had more than a tiny fraction of
               | the user-base of VSCode? Thus I don't see how
               | "Extinquish" plays a role here.
               | 
               | I still think it makes more sense to think of the
               | strategy as more akin to the FOSS-washing / freemium
               | models used by many companies.
        
           | tlonny wrote:
           | I moved from vim to VS code as I found the vim IDE experience
           | slightly lacking. Recently I've found myself getting more and
           | more fed up with how sluggish VS code feels.
           | 
           | With the push from a friend, I tried neovim with the
           | requisite LS plugins and I'm never going back. It's lightning
           | fast and has feature parity (at least the ones I use) with VS
           | Code.
           | 
           | Its a bit of a bitch to setup, but there are preconfigured
           | solutions out there (NVChad, LunarVim, AstroVim) if you want
           | to skip all that bullshit and just get coding...
           | 
           | Definitely recommend giving it a go!
        
             | sebular wrote:
             | NvChad is excellent. I recently finished converting my
             | older .vimrc-based configuration to an entirely lua-based
             | one on top of the base NvChad setup and it's just perfect.
        
             | dvko wrote:
             | Seconded. Neovim with their built-in LSP is so good! Was a
             | happy VSCode user for years but not very comfortable with
             | how they're starting to push more and more proprietary
             | pieces, so started looking for alternatives. Neovim fits
             | the bill perfectly.
             | 
             | Helix is another one to watch. Not quite at Neovim's level
             | and may need some reprogramming of the vim muscle memory
             | but definitely promising!
        
         | throwawayJA1820 wrote:
         | Replit should create a whitelist version of their product and
         | offer it as web editor
        
       | kapitanjakc wrote:
       | Same RAM consumption?
        
         | eschurter wrote:
         | GitLab team member & PM for the Web IDE here! In our
         | measurements the memory footprint was between 50-80% lower than
         | the previous Web IDE. I'm not sure how it compares to other
         | web-based instances of VS Code.
        
       | alias_neo wrote:
       | > with an implementation inspired by Visual Studio Code.
       | 
       | Is this an indication of Gitlabs new "corporate" culture? The
       | website already seems less "OSS" than it did, but to say
       | "inspired by" is a hairline away from bullshit.
       | 
       | It's not inspired by VSCode, it _is_ VSCode.
        
         | john_cogs wrote:
         | GitLab team member here.
         | 
         | Thanks for the feedback.
         | 
         | I created a merge request to update our documentation based on
         | your comment and linked to the comment in the MR description:
         | https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/107599
        
         | lozenge wrote:
         | According to Microsoft's trademark lawyers, it definitely isn't
         | VS Code.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | edgyquant wrote:
         | The title says powered by
        
           | alias_neo wrote:
           | There is no such title on the actual Gitlab docs page it
           | links to, and from where I retrieved the quoted text.
        
           | maronato wrote:
           | Which is odd because "powered" isn't written anywhere on the
           | page.
        
         | xigoi wrote:
         | > Is this an indication of Gitlabs new "corporate" culture?
         | 
         | New? GitLab has been corporate-y for a long time.
        
       | aliswe wrote:
       | I just want to ask: Why?
       | 
       | Is this really something that will benefit Gitlab in the short,
       | mid or long term?
        
         | jostiniane wrote:
         | Why integrating the most used IDE/Editor?
         | 
         | Some companies are already moving to remote IDE models for a
         | variety of reasons, I would prefer using this Gitlab IDE over a
         | VPS hosted in the company cloud for sure.
         | 
         | That's the last question I would ask.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | Moving back actually. About 20 years ago I used IDEs over X
           | Windows remote sessions, and in many projects VS over RDP was
           | also an option.
        
         | vultour wrote:
         | It will certainly benefit me as a user. I frequently use the
         | current web editor for small changes and it's really not that
         | great.
        
         | john_cogs wrote:
         | GitLab team member here.
         | 
         | There is more context in this blog post:
         | https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2022/05/23/the-future-of-the-g...
         | 
         | The TLDR is that the Web IDE is a widely used feature (tens of
         | millions of commits have been made using it) and building our
         | new Web IDE with VS Code will allow us to invest in extending
         | the experience to be more tightly integrated with GitLab and
         | the DevOps workflow rather than re-creating VS Code features in
         | our Web IDE.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | Dave3of5 wrote:
       | Pretty much a carbon copy of what github has been doing for a
       | long while now even down to the keyboard shortcut.
        
         | lucideer wrote:
         | A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding this as Gitlab
         | introducing a Web IDE. They're actually just swapping out the
         | implementation in their existing Web IDE (which existed long
         | before Github's)
        
         | Kelteseth wrote:
         | Good. This is why open source is awesome. The current editor
         | does really feel clunky to work with.
        
         | krsdcbl wrote:
         | I'd see that as a good thing, the less i gotta think while
         | working with either system the better
        
       | terminal_d wrote:
       | Anyone think there'll be another editor that'll surpass VSCode,
       | similar to how VSCode surpassed Atom (and others)? I used to
       | think that there would be one, but now I'm not so sure.
        
         | numbsafari wrote:
         | Eventually someone will develop an IDE with a proper sandbox
         | for plugins and extensions, rather than the free-for-all that
         | is VSCode.
        
         | morelisp wrote:
         | I see your profile says you're in your early 20s, so I kind of
         | understand the question but also I'll be blunt: yes, there will
         | be another text editor. 90% of the tools you use today will be
         | gone by the end of your career.
        
           | azalemeth wrote:
           | And the remainder will be called things like vim, emacs, awk,
           | and sed ;-)
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | I forgot the name of the principal, but there's a rule of
             | thumb that a thing's future life expectancy is related to
             | how long they've already been around. So _in general_ if
             | some new text editor emerges, I give it a reasonable chance
             | of being dead in 6 months. VSC is old enough to probably be
             | around for a while now. And I fully expect emacs and vi /m
             | to outlive me:)
        
               | rileyphone wrote:
               | Lindy effect.
        
             | morelisp wrote:
             | Even awk is slowly but surely on the way out at this
             | point... sed probably has another strong decade though.
        
           | brabel wrote:
           | Exactly what I thought reading that comment... but there will
           | still be some older people sticking to it for perhaps a
           | decade or two... just like we have people today still using
           | emacs (guilty) and Vim. Not sure if VS Code will last nearly
           | as long as those, it's really hard to stay around for 40+
           | years (anyone here using ed, Eclipse, Sublime, Netbeans??? I
           | am sure there are a few, but the number is dropping fast).
        
         | lallysingh wrote:
         | With language servers, I think the big IDEs will be less
         | relevant. It'll be easier for anyone to write a text editor
         | with language server integration and make it with just the way
         | they like.
        
           | dmitriid wrote:
           | You're forgetting the actual heavy lifting that proper IDEs
           | do, and that VS Code leaves to language implementors. Unless
           | you know how to do proper code analysis, you won't be able to
           | make it "just the way you like".
           | 
           | Even writing a proper IDE-aware compiler is a quite a
           | daunting task.
        
         | matkoniecz wrote:
         | Why there would not be?
        
         | screamingninja wrote:
         | > Anyone think there'll be another editor that'll surpass
         | VSCode
         | 
         | Worthy mention- Zed is the spiritual successful of Atom that is
         | being rewritten in Rust. Text editors gain and lose popularity
         | often, so the potential is definitely there.
         | 
         | https://zed.dev/
        
           | andrew_ wrote:
           | This is definitely the one I'm looking at closest. There's
           | also Lapce https://github.com/lapce/lapce which has great
           | velocity and looks to be a pretty welcoming project.
           | 
           | VS Code has become the IE of old imo and it'll take an
           | industry shift to kick it, just like IE. Microsoft is not
           | being a good steward of open source for the project, and over
           | time that will wear on people. Hopefully that'll irritate the
           | right people with the right amount of money to do something
           | about it.
        
           | FpUser wrote:
           | Rust - I would not give rat's ass about what language was
           | used to write an IDE as long as it performs adequately. VS
           | Code definitely does it. I for example can comfortable edit,
           | compile and debug my code written in C++ and other languages
           | locally and on remote servers with fast turnaround. VS code
           | is the closest thing ever to come to a full blown modern IDE.
           | Replicating this complete functionality and plugin ecosystem
           | will not be easy. I would not even bother looking at things
           | like Zed unless it can do the same things.
        
             | bitwize wrote:
             | Rust is pretty much the most important programming language
             | in the world right now. Using it to eliminate entire
             | classes of bugs is a huge win for developers everywhere.
        
               | 12345hn6789 wrote:
               | This is a pretty enormous statement. Programming
               | languages are tools and not every tool suits every job.
               | Rust is certainly a "good" language but it will not
               | change the world. In 10 years perhaps we can resume this
               | conversation with some actual substance.
        
               | AYBABTME wrote:
               | Go changed the world in that it made the rapid
               | development of things like Docker, Kubernetes, possible,
               | along a multitude of other "cloud first" services. This
               | in turn made possible things that were much harder to do
               | before. A single trivial example being the massive NN
               | training pipelines by self-driving companies.
               | 
               | All this could have been done another way, using another
               | language, but not at the same speed as what was enabled
               | by the ergonomy of Go, and not with the same enthusiasm.
               | Arguably, the boiling mix phenomenon made a multitude of
               | things happen and possible, by making them easier to do,
               | thus crossing a required minimum threshold where enough
               | people have the time, desire and ability to achieve
               | something.
               | 
               | Rust will do the same.
               | 
               | It's like catalysts in chemistry. They are not the
               | reagents, but they often make the reaction statistically
               | possible in the first place.
        
               | FpUser wrote:
               | As already said I do not care. I would not trade shitty
               | app written in "proper" language over one that is not but
               | does the actual useful work for me.
               | 
               | >"...eliminate entire classes of bugs..."
               | 
               | With modern C++, static analyzers and address sanitizers
               | this aspect of Rust does not matter that much for me
               | personally. As a language Rust looks way more restricted
               | to me than a modern C++ and dancing around borrow checker
               | is far from fun. Unless explicitly required by contract I
               | do not see it as a business case with positive ROI for
               | me. I run my own company and I actually pay for
               | development.
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | It was rather my impression that the classes of bugs that
               | rust fixes are entirely in memory management, which is to
               | say that they never existed in managed languages in the
               | first place. That makes it a big step forward for bare
               | metal and performance critical code, but kind of
               | unimportant anywhere where ex. Java, Python, or
               | JavaScript are used.
        
         | StevePerkins wrote:
         | At the end of the day, VS Code is a shitty Electron app. It's
         | one of the most highly optimized and performant Electron apps
         | ever created... but it's still a shitty Electron app. Startup
         | time on my machine is only a hair faster than Jetbrains _IDE
         | 's_ launching a JVM, it's ridiculous.
         | 
         | VS Code has the market share that it has because:
         | 
         | 1. They encouraged a huge plugin ecosystem.
         | 
         | 2. They made it cross-platform and gave it away for free, while
         | Sublime costs money.
         | 
         | 3. Most importantly of all (in my cynical opinion), they went
         | "dark mode" by default at just the right time when this was
         | becoming a trendy new feature among devs.
         | 
         | There are plenty of text editors that are far better than VS
         | Code, but they either cost money or are for a single platform
         | only. If someone came out with a free, cross-platform,
         | attractive text editor that was a _native executable_ and got
         | critical mass going with a plugin ecosystem, then VS Code would
         | fall out of fashion within a year. There 's no genuine
         | groundswell of support for Microsoft as a trendy entity with
         | brand loyalty among young devs.
         | 
         | The recent boomer adage "No one wants to work anymore" simply
         | has its sad technical analogue, "No one wants to create desktop
         | apps anymore".
        
           | FpUser wrote:
           | >"At the end of the day, VS Code is a shitty Electron app. "
           | 
           | It provides huge practical value to me as a developer. I am
           | not fond of JavaScript being used as front end but as long as
           | it performs decent job for particular use case I do not care.
           | I use development tools to develop products and make money. I
           | do not fight holy tech wars.
           | 
           | >"Startup time on my machine is only a hair faster than
           | Jetbrains IDE's launching a JVM, it's ridiculous."
           | 
           | I value my development time and my development computers are
           | very decent (desktop for example is 16 core AMD with 128GB
           | RAM). Launching VS code on my machines is nearly instant.
           | CLion from JetBrains is much slower (10 sec from cold start
           | to opening my C++ project in a usable state for example) but
           | still very acceptable. I do not restart it every minute. More
           | like once in few days when using it.
           | 
           | >"VS Code has the market share that it has because:"
           | 
           | I do not care why. I am a consumer here. It is for a people
           | who want to beat VS Code to figure out why and do better than
           | MS. Me - I have my own problems to worry about and I just use
           | tools that work for me.
           | 
           | >"Most importantly of all (in my cynical opinion), they went
           | "dark mode" by default at just the right time when this was
           | becoming a trendy new feature among devs."
           | 
           | I do not give a flying fuck about what is trendy for a
           | generic developer. What is important for me in VS code along
           | with plugin ecosystem let's me develop, lint, _debug_ my code
           | locally and on remote servers. As long as proper ergonomics
           | / usability guidelines are followed I do not really care
           | whether the mode is dark or light.
           | 
           | >"If someone came out with a free, cross-platform, attractive
           | text editor that was a native executable and got critical
           | mass going with a plugin ecosystem, then VS Code would fall
           | out of fashion within a year."
           | 
           | And if I had a million dollars I'd be rich. Coulda, shoulda,
           | woulda. And VS code is way more than an editor.
           | 
           | >"No one wants to create desktop apps anymore".
           | 
           | I actually have native desktop product and it keeps bringing
           | me some dosh for what is a very little maintenance.
        
             | StevePerkins wrote:
             | For someone who starts by saying they don't fight tech holy
             | wars, this sure does read like a tech holy war.
             | 
             | I am not insulting your personal identity by disparaging
             | your choice in text editor. I am responding to a question
             | of what could cause a future competitor to take the top
             | spot away from VS Code.
             | 
             | My answer is that VS Code has inherent challenges from
             | being built atop an embedded web browser, and that a
             | similar implementation based on direct native executables
             | may be the path through which it's successor will emerge.
             | Carry on.
        
               | FpUser wrote:
               | >"For someone who opens by saying that they don't fight
               | tech holy wars, this sure does read like a tech holy war.
               | 
               | No. I need to take my eyes from work every once in a
               | while and HN to me is one of the ways to do it. I just
               | explained my opinion about a subject. If you believe that
               | I really care about actually convincing anyone be my
               | guest.
        
           | coffee_cup wrote:
           | well there's emacs, although it probably wouldn't qualify as
           | 'attractive'
        
           | goguy wrote:
           | > If someone came out with a free, cross-platform, attractive
           | text editor that was a native executable and got critical
           | mass going with a plugin ecosystem, then VS Code would fall
           | out of fashion within a year.
           | 
           | Well yeah, there's the problem. This isn't an easy task, it
           | has never been done before.
        
             | StevePerkins wrote:
             | It's been done with Vim and Emacs, among others. Full
             | desktop GUI versions, in addition to the original terminal-
             | based form.
             | 
             | It just hasn't been done RECENTLY... with an editor that is
             | visually attractive, and uses modern keyboard conventions
             | rather than arcane keystroke DSL's that are inaccessible
             | for the masses. But that's just a matter of project
             | philosophy, not technical limitations with what's doable.
        
               | shadowgovt wrote:
               | This is definitely the first time I've ever seen the
               | adjective 'attractive' applied to either vim or emacs.
        
               | StevePerkins wrote:
               | If by "applied to Vim and Emacs", you mean "included in a
               | list of theoretical differences from Vim and Emacs", then
               | sure.
        
               | shadowgovt wrote:
               | > > > free, cross-platform, attractive text editor
               | 
               | > > Well yeah, there's the problem. This isn't an easy
               | task, it has never been done before.
               | 
               | > It's been done with Vim and Emacs
               | 
               | My apologies if I misunderstood how you intended the
               | pronouns to be applied.
        
         | Shorel wrote:
         | It depends on who you ask.
         | 
         | Personally, I still prefer Sublime Text to VSCode.
         | 
         | Now, the problem is ST is proprietary, but then VSCode is
         | starting to be proprietary as well.
        
           | silverwind wrote:
           | Sublime Text is still considerable faster than VSCode, and
           | also has LSP via plugins, but its development again has
           | grinded to a halt, which seems to be something that happens
           | periodically when the team decides to focus on other
           | products.
        
         | sph wrote:
         | What will get bigger than VSCode is the wrong question to ask.
         | Eventually it'll be unmaintained and people will have moved
         | onto something else. The only constants in the editor mindshare
         | circus are Emacs and vim, and even those will fade away, one
         | day, much later than VSCode.
        
           | bauerd wrote:
           | This is just begging the question why VS code would become
           | unmaintained
        
         | aniforprez wrote:
         | There's many editors in this space that are trying to do
         | similar things but built in Rust, Go and such. They're all
         | nascent projects and all extremely immature to the point that I
         | installed them all and immediately removed them but they show
         | promise. There's Lapce, Zed, Fleet and Nova which are all
         | native apps without Electron but having tried them all out,
         | they're lacking in one way or another
        
           | maegul wrote:
           | Seeing recently Onivim 2 die and Brackets too (I don't know
           | much about that project, but it was Adobe backed FWIW)
           | reminds me that these things can come and go. Getting people
           | to become users and getting plug-in authors to invest their
           | time seems like a nightmare. It's surely no coincidence that
           | VS Code was backed by a mega corp.
        
         | nicce wrote:
         | JetBrain's Fleet looks very promising. Does many things better
         | out of the box than VSCode with gazillion of extensions. Too
         | bad that popular keybindings are not supported properly yet.
        
         | levesque wrote:
         | To me VSCode is not comparable to Pycharm for Python
         | programming & debugging. Pycharm just works better and has much
         | better code completion.
        
           | CrimpCity wrote:
           | pycharm is also MUCH smarter figuring out import paths.
        
         | ericcholis wrote:
         | I think that the market share of "new" IDEs is pretty well
         | established between VSCode, Sublime and the various Jetbrains
         | offerings.
        
           | minusf wrote:
           | is sublime an IDE? i guess i could call my neovim python
           | setup an IDE, but i don't.
        
             | BaculumMeumEst wrote:
             | I think it makes to count any editor with an LSP client as
             | an "IDE" and call a day rather than engage in endless,
             | meaningless debates on subjective terminology
        
             | josephd79 wrote:
             | what's the difference between vscode/sublime and an IDE?
             | Honest question, not being sarcastic.
        
         | maegul wrote:
         | No, I think they've won this cycle in the same way that Windows
         | and Google did theirs. The only issue for them is that it's
         | still text editing under the hood, which is a fundamental
         | enough of a tool that there'll always be alternatives
         | scratching away at their supremacy (unlike an operating system
         | for instance). So copilot and good LSP servers are probably big
         | factors in their dominance.
         | 
         | Still seems like a market shift would be required to take them
         | down, like an AI revolution, but then MS seem to be on top of
         | that so far. Perhaps if CI/CD is reinvented in a wonderful way
         | with mass adoption, integrated code editing and manipulation
         | could reshape the text editor.
        
           | rjzzleep wrote:
           | lsp actually came out of the .net opensource community.
           | omnisharp to be exact. It's funny how much is actually
           | attributed to MS in this case, when most of VSCode did not
           | originate there.
           | 
           | There's no reason at all why VSCode has "won" the same way
           | Windows and Google did. VSCode fixed two main issues of Atom.
           | If anything it was a natural evolution. The name was just a
           | smart marketing play. There are some things that are
           | exclusive VSCode but most of the important pieces are not.
           | 
           | I think the main reason there is no direct VSCode competitor
           | is because there is currently no need to. People that use
           | their own respective flavours of editors have almost the same
           | features in their own respective features, so what's the
           | point in mirroring it?
        
             | maegul wrote:
             | Fair. Like I said, it's a text editor and only does things
             | so much "better" than their competitors who are likely to
             | retain their user bases to some extent. We seem to
             | generally agree on this.
             | 
             | But the ecosystem effects of GitHub integration and getting
             | into the browser as is the case with the top parent post
             | and being the home for LSP servers seem to me like enough
             | of an "embrace" to secure a "win" however lesser it is than
             | Google's. I'm not a user though, just my view from the
             | outside.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | SalmoShalazar wrote:
       | Oddly enough it seems like this launched without the ability to
       | make new branches. Kind of makes it unusable for me at the
       | moment.
        
         | sarki_247 wrote:
         | GitLab team member here! This feature is currently being worked
         | on. You can follow the progress in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
         | org/gitlab-web-ide/-/issues/72
        
       | coreyog wrote:
       | A buddy sent me this article a few days ago:
       | https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
       | 
       | If I hadn't read it, I might think Gitlab incorporating vscode
       | was a good thing.
        
         | jdthedisciple wrote:
         | Seriously no time to read this.
         | 
         | What's the TL;DR?
        
           | another_devy wrote:
           | TL;DR (meta phrased)
           | 
           | Microsoft is forking VSCode open source community by split
           | licensing for source code and and official build of VSCode.
           | If you build by yourself you can't connect to VSCode is
           | marketplace.
           | 
           | This allows them to fully control VSCode telemetry and
           | reporting along with use on platforms such as Gitpod. It's
           | similar to how Apple controls apps on iPhone and in turn
           | control how much you need to pay them if you earn money on
           | it.
           | 
           | In long run everything going on cloud and SaaS/ PaaS platform
           | holding the keys to developer tooling gate such as VSCode,
           | Microsoft has unfair advantage over other competitors and
           | still keep benefits of OSS
        
           | meonmyphone wrote:
           | There is a short summary at the end.
        
       | Kukumber wrote:
       | That's a very bad signal..
       | 
       | Where did all the investor money go? just to slap vscode?
       | 
       | I sincerely hope Sublime Text open sources its editor so the
       | community can hack together a WASM version of ST..
       | 
       | Things are not looking great
        
         | metadaemon wrote:
         | For people who don't like vs code?
        
           | Kukumber wrote:
           | Oh, people are free to like what ever they want
           | 
           | Specially the people who have a short memory and forgot about
           | the recent Python extension controversy
           | 
           | Screw them!
           | 
           | Considering we were warned already from that company,
           | remember dotnet hotreload?
           | 
           | https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/22/microsoft_net_hot_rel.
           | ..
           | 
           | When your sole choice becomes their sole product, one should
           | have reacted in the past
        
       | greatgib wrote:
       | I don't understand that girls is letting that going when they
       | pretend to care for OSS. Microsoft is in the embrace phase, there
       | is not a major forge that will remain that will not force to use
       | their things.
       | 
       | Then they will be able to start with messing things, like
       | requiring proprietary extensions to lock down the thing. I guess
       | a lot of people here don't remember the good old time of Visual
       | Studio on Windows.
        
         | greatgib wrote:
         | Can't edit but yes "gitlab" and not "girls". Shitty android
         | auto-completion!
        
         | ZiiS wrote:
         | The default Python extension is already proprietary.
        
           | worble wrote:
           | So is their C# debugger
        
             | notpushkin wrote:
             | There's this FOSS replacement based on Samsung's open
             | source C# debugger: https://open-
             | vsx.org/extension/muhammad-sammy/csharp
        
         | whatever1 wrote:
         | VScode's killer feature is its remote development capability.
         | 
         | Its prevalence could had been averted if Linux folks were not
         | that stuck in command prompt editors for ssh work, and
         | lecturing beginners about their incompetence to learn the
         | keyboard commands of vi.
         | 
         | At some point there was some work in forwarding UI via X11, but
         | it was very clunky and slow. The Remote Desktop capabilities of
         | Linux are also atrocious for rendering text.
         | 
         | So here we are, Microsoft covered the gaps that the community
         | underplayed for decades, and now is dominating.
        
           | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
           | Totally agree with this sentiment. Everything else about the
           | VSCode experience more or less exists elsewhere. The turn key
           | (and improving) remote experience is incredible. That the
           | infrastructure also works with the development containers
           | concept is brilliant.
        
           | xigoi wrote:
           | https://github.com/jbyuki/instant.nvim
        
         | roblabla wrote:
         | > like requiring proprietary extensions to lock down the thing.
         | 
         | Which they are already doing in a lot of places. For instance,
         | the VSCode Python extension replaced the open source language
         | server with a proprietary rewrite (PyLance)[0]. They also have
         | quite a few extensions that are proprietary, like LiveView.
         | 
         | And it's worth noting that those extensions explicitly forbid
         | running in anything other than the official VSCode from
         | Microsoft. Forks cannot legally run those extensions, and some
         | of the extensions will have DRM to prevent it from
         | happening[1].
         | 
         | [0]:
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/n9yse1/as_of_today_...
         | 
         | [1]:
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/k0s8qw/vs_code_devel...
        
           | nonethewiser wrote:
           | Which means it's not truly OSS. But I dont think its
           | insidious for software to have good proprietary features that
           | make the tool better.
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | > But I dont think its insidious for software to have good
             | proprietary features that make the tool better.
             | 
             | Maybe not, but it's absolutely insidious to have open
             | source features and then replace them with proprietary
             | ones.
        
             | madeofpalk wrote:
             | It means that there is a truly OSS core VS Code (presumably
             | what Gitlab and Code Sandbox uses), and proprietary
             | extensions on top that Microsoft ship in their default
             | (proprietary) distribution
        
               | matkoniecz wrote:
               | If someone is a purist and wants to use it to avoid lock-
               | in - it is available at
               | https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium
        
               | andrew_ wrote:
               | I gave this an earnest try over the course of a few
               | months. There were notable bugs in nearly all of the
               | extensions I needed to use for work. It's known that
               | Microsoft ships custom builds of the open source portion
               | of VS Code, and there's certainly something missing from
               | the open source core. I ended up going back to hobbled
               | Atom while I wait for projects like Zed to mature.
        
               | lozenge wrote:
               | That doesn't make sense to me as there are next to no
               | changes between VSCodium and VS Code.
               | 
               | Unless these extensions were closed source Microsoft-
               | authored?
        
               | roblabla wrote:
               | > That doesn't make sense to me as there are next to no
               | changes between VSCodium and VS Code.
               | 
               | Honest question: How would we know that? Is it possible
               | to somehow diff vscode's code with the open source repo?
               | Is there an analysis available somewhere of the
               | differences?
        
               | matkoniecz wrote:
               | And I am simply not using extensions. (Viable for me, may
               | be not viable for others.)
        
               | Cthulhu_ wrote:
               | But given that the architecture is open source, there's
               | nothing stopping the people behind e.g. Python from
               | embracing the language server protocol and providing
               | better tooling. Besides time / money, but that ties in to
               | the known problem that open source is very difficult to
               | monetize.
        
         | aliswe wrote:
         | Sorry, this went over my head. What was that about girls, you
         | said?
        
           | petepete wrote:
           | On my phone (Pixel) if you type 'gitlab' into the Google
           | Keyboard and it suggests 'girls'.
        
             | dijit wrote:
             | Tangent: Why is autocomplete getting _worse_ on phones? iOS
             | is notably _much_ worse, often replacing completely correct
             | words with other unrelated words. Frustratingly even doing
             | it _ _again_ _ when you fix the word.
        
               | dmitriid wrote:
               | I read somewhere that Apple replaced their own language
               | model for autocomplete with a crowdsourced one (that is,
               | taken from usage from many phones), and the quality
               | immediately went downhill.
        
               | kristopolous wrote:
               | It's a difficult balance to strike. The older systems
               | didn't take frequency into account so they'd suggest
               | really obscure words and the newer systems weigh it too
               | heavily so it overrides your intentions. Problems are
               | harder than they appear
        
               | dec0dedab0de wrote:
               | _iOS is notably much worse_
               | 
               | My girlfriend is the only person I know with an IPhone,
               | and her spelling got much worse over the last year when
               | she had to get a new phone. Every time I tease her she
               | blames the phone, some of the corrections aren't even
               | words. It's just silly at this point. She also has to
               | watch ads on websites because there is no firefox/ublock
               | origin, I don't know how she tolerates it.
        
               | heartbreak wrote:
               | Ad blockers on iOS are called "Content Blockers" and can
               | be found in the App Store. I use one called Purify.
               | 
               | Notably the Content Blocker implementation is in typical
               | Apple form. The interface with Safari is such that Safari
               | itself is applying a ruleset to the page, and the CB only
               | provides the rules. That means the CB never sees the
               | pages you're actually browsing.
        
               | stinos wrote:
               | Feels like a combination of wanting to roll out new
               | 'better' stuff which isn't tested enough, or just not
               | good enough, plus essentially people not really caring
               | and/or thinking that new tech must by definition be
               | better.
               | 
               | It's like with orientation detection. You'd think that
               | after a decade this would have been a done thing. On the
               | contrary: it amazes me to no end how many times a day
               | people want to show me something on their phone and then
               | go like 'oh wait..shake phone..nope..shake again..finally
               | got it'. When I ask them why they don't just turn it off
               | or replace it with a hardware or software button they say
               | something about it sometimes working and/or not wanting
               | to lookup where to change the setting. Same with voice
               | control in the past years. This is getting better it
               | seems, slowly, but I can't keep track of the number of
               | times people were getting angry because their words
               | wouldn't come through and the navigation wasn't driving
               | them where they want or their text message were full of
               | bs. Still they persist, seemingly because 'I paid for
               | this new thing so I better try'. Which is utterly
               | nonsensical for an engineering mind.
        
               | beckingz wrote:
               | I've disabled iOS autocorrect/autocomplete because it's
               | gotten so bad.
        
               | dijit wrote:
               | I will follow your example, lets see how much it was
               | actually helping me. :)
        
               | notjoemama wrote:
               | Thank you! My subconcious has been telling me to do that
               | for ages. I finally just did it and am typing this reply
               | without the hand holding. Feels a bit like taking the
               | training wheels off a bike, but good in the same way too.
        
           | dtgriscom wrote:
           | ... perhaps "girls" => "Gitlab"?
        
         | npteljes wrote:
         | Well, they can just fork if something happens, no? Or even
         | phase out this product, if something goes that wrong.
        
           | vorpalhex wrote:
           | Many core features like remote editing and python support use
           | a DRM so they only run in VSCode and not forks.
        
             | thiht wrote:
             | These are NOT core features. They're literally extensions.
             | Anyone could create an alternative for both of these if
             | they wanted it.
        
         | kristopolous wrote:
         | Or maybe Microsoft is done being a bastard.
         | 
         | It's a different group of people steering the ship then it was
         | 25 years ago.
         | 
         | I know how fun it is to presume they are being exclusively evil
         | but who knows, things can change
        
           | mikro2nd wrote:
           | Or maybe not. It's harder to change an organisational DNA
           | than just changing the people.
           | 
           | tl;dr: MS is still evil.
        
             | anthonypasq wrote:
             | its not that hard to change it over the course of 25 years
             | when 99.99% of the employees are different people
        
             | kristopolous wrote:
             | That corporate strategy has failed them recently.
             | 
             | They had been doing mobile ever since the mostly fiction
             | pen windows (which became windows CE a few years later) in
             | 1992 but lost that battle so hard with things like Kin and
             | Lumia they dropped out. And let's forget about Zune.
             | 
             | At one point they has 95% of the browser market but lost
             | that so much that they completely abandoned their browser
             | engine.
             | 
             | Despite all the money they've thrown at projects like
             | Surface and Bing, they have failed to come anywhere near a
             | dominant position. Even in gaming consoles, which has been
             | fairly successful, they're still in 3rd place behind Sony
             | and Nintendo after over 20 years.
             | 
             | Their cloud azure is nowhere near AWS ... being a barbarian
             | emperor hasn't been working for them for a long time and
             | demanding the 1970s IBM style vertically integrated
             | infrastructure is not a luxury they have.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | > It's a different group of people steering the ship then it
           | was 25 years ago.
           | 
           | Is it a different group of people than were steering when
           | they decided to patent troll Android OEMs less than a decade
           | ago?
           | 
           | Is it a different group of people than were steering when
           | they started abusing their desktop market share to strong arm
           | their way into the browser market last year?
           | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29415031)
           | 
           | Microsoft didn't change, they're just being more careful now
           | that their position is weaker.
        
           | xigoi wrote:
           | If they really liked open source now, they would open-source
           | all their software, or at least all their new software.
        
             | kristopolous wrote:
             | open source as a for-profit business is hard. Most for-
             | profits in the space have a closed source commercial
             | product somewhere in the mix. They've got quite a bit open
             | source right now. It's not bad. Compare with Adobe, Oracle,
             | Intuit, Apple, ... not the worst.
        
         | thiht wrote:
         | This seems alarmist for no founded reasons.
         | 
         | > Then they will be able to start with messing things, like
         | requiring proprietary extensions to lock down the thing
         | 
         | Some extensions are already closed source: Remote Development,
         | Python, and probably tons of other which I didn't even notice.
         | So what? What does it change in practice? What's stopping
         | anyone from creating their open source alternative if it
         | bothers them?
         | 
         | Now let's say they "extinguish" their extension ecosystem. Then
         | they die and everyone switches to VSCodium and open-vsx for
         | extensions. Again, what's the problem?
         | 
         | I honestly think they're in a position where not only the EEE
         | is not their strategy anymore, but also it's not even doable
         | with the state of VSCode.
         | 
         | Now, what exactly are your arguments?
        
         | aaws11 wrote:
         | girls!
        
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