[HN Gopher] Open source 'Eclipse Theia IDE' exits beta to challe...
___________________________________________________________________
Open source 'Eclipse Theia IDE' exits beta to challenge Visual
Studio Code
Author : avivallssa
Score : 197 points
Date : 2024-06-28 20:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (visualstudiomagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (visualstudiomagazine.com)
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Is Theia supposed to replace Eclipse IDE?
|
| What's the point here?
| gtirloni wrote:
| _> What 's the point here?_
|
| Hard to say.
| tredre3 wrote:
| Their goal seems to provide a framework for other projects to
| build custom IDEs. For example, Arduino based their 2.0 IDE on
| Theia.
|
| Whether or not it's truly a better base than upstream VS
| Code/Codium is hard to say.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Challenge in terms of having a stupid name? If yes, then they are
| succeeding.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Since this seems otherwise unrelated to the desktop Eclipse IDE,
| does anyone have positive feelings about the Eclipse brand?
| Granted I last used it about 20 years ago, but it was a less than
| positive experience.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I once used eclipse c development tools to hack frogcomposband
| to my whim and desire, it was a decent experience for "free"
| InfiniteRand wrote:
| Eclipse is reliable decent for a wide variety of needs -
| that's ultimately its selling point
| mark38848 wrote:
| It has no "selling" points. If it had any pecuniary cost
| nobody would use it.
| exabrial wrote:
| I use Eclipse desktop regularly. It has its quirks, as most all
| source software does, but it's more than sufficient to get the
| job done.
|
| In the same vain, I did try to learn the ins-outs of vscode and
| I wasn't impressed after a few months. It has about the 1/16 of
| the capabilities of Eclipse, and things are very broken pretty
| much 100% of the time, or it'll suddenly break when something
| auto updates. It's also, just obnoxious to use: popups,
| distractions that never go away, settings are in a schema-less
| json, and a completely incoherent user experience when you do
| something as minor as switch plugins. Compare that to regular
| ol' Eclipse, which presents a unified editing interface for
| every language and file type.
|
| I used IntelliJ for a brief stint and I would say it's very
| polished and a lot of small annoyances with Eclipse it doesn't
| have, and it exceeds Eclipse in several areas, but not to the
| point where I would go relearn an entire tool. So yeah... I'll
| probably just stick with Eclipse until I can't anymore!
| hobs wrote:
| Yeah, I was lucky that early in my career a swdev turned me
| onto intellij stuff, it's sometimes second best at stuff and
| sometimes the bugs are 10 years old with no fixes in sight,
| but it still feels way better all the time than vscode.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I have never used an IDE more opaque than Eclipse, you can
| _feel_ the crusty Java code everywhere.
|
| I don't particularly like VSCode, but your criticisms are
| simply not true (anymore). It has GUI settings, it is pretty
| stable and you can make things go away.
| peterashford wrote:
| Intellij, Resharper et al are Java IDEs and they're the
| best in the business
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| ReSharper is written in C#, not Java.
| neonsunset wrote:
| Rider has the shared "IDE" part with IntelliJ and others,
| written in Java, but the back-end and numerous other
| components are written in C#.
| exabrial wrote:
| I was speaking about my experience 8 months ago, so...
| yeah.
| thiht wrote:
| > and things are very broken pretty much 100% of the time, or
| it'll suddenly break when something auto updates. It's also,
| just obnoxious to use: popups, distractions that never go
| away, settings are in a schema-less json, and a completely
| incoherent user experience when you do something as minor as
| switch plugins
|
| That's... extremely far from my experience with VSCode, are
| you sure you're even talking about VSCode?
|
| I've literally never had anything break after an update, not
| even a plugin. Not saying it doesn't happen, because it
| definitely does (every version is followed by 1 or 2 patches
| in the following days), but it's usually about pretty niche
| breakages.
|
| All popups and toasters have a cog wheel on the top right
| that let you tell them to never show up, if you wish. And to
| be fair, there are very few, the only ones that come to mind
| are "oh I know this file type; do you want to install the
| appropriate extension?", which is honestly a welcome hint
| (that you can disable globally if you don't like it).
|
| What you call "distractions that never go away" I'm not sure,
| because almost everything in the UI can be hidden. What do
| you think count as a distraction?
|
| Regarding the settings, it's plain wrong. The settings have
| had a visual editing interface for years, and the underlying
| JSON is definitely typed. If you add a key that doesn't
| exist, it'll be greyed out. Invalid values have a red
| squiggle.
|
| I have no idea what you mean with "incoherent user experience
| depending on plugins", specifically because the extension API
| doesn't let extensions do incoherent stuff.
| exabrial wrote:
| As an example:
|
| We have a build for a giant xyz customer system. Every part
| of the codebase is modern; it has thousands of JUnit5 test
| cases, 26+ modules. We've set the build up "correctly":
| following Maven best practices and it turns out, when you
| follow them, things are really quick with builds just under a
| few minutes.
|
| Eclipse does an amazing just handling a project this size. It
| also is able to do things VsCode simply cannot do. We had a
| enum we needed to move from a submodule to a a global one.
| Eclipse found all of the references, including ones in our
| documentation, strings, test cases, and even prop files for
| runtime config, and refactored the whole thing in a few
| clicks. We've had the same experience with IntelliJ actually
| too, where the tools are even more refined.
|
| Eclipse/IntelliJ are on a different plane. VsCode does have
| it's merits, but it's not really a full blown IDE.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| It's ridiculous how bloated Eclipse used to be perceived, and
| how lightweight it is now compared to VS Code. Eclipse can run
| on a 256MB Java heap...
| bitwize wrote:
| Eclipse seemed to me to be a "substrate for Eclipse plugins"
| first and foremost, whereas both NetBeans and IntelliJ struck
| me as "tools for writing code" first.
| atombender wrote:
| That's how it was designed, from even back when it was
| VisualAge and written in SmallTalk.
|
| Eclipse is basically a language-neutral UI "shell", the
| "Eclipse Tool Platform", where all language/code-related
| functionality is provided as bundles of extensions. And
| then extensions can be extended, and so on.
|
| Eventually they standardized the extension system around an
| extension/component framework called OSGi. Not sure if this
| new Eclipse IDE uses it.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Since this seems otherwise unrelated to the desktop Eclipse
| IDE, does anyone have positive feelings about the Eclipse
| brand?
|
| I do.
|
| It was used as the basis for code-sourcery, which was the
| foundation for many a vendors embedded toolkit.
|
| More recently, I used it for ESP development, and I was
| absolutely floored that Eclipse is, in 2024, a lightweight and
| featureful alternative to VSCode.
|
| My prior memories of Eclipse was that, once started, it would
| slow my machine to a crawl. Now it runs lighter than the most
| popular "modern" editors; after doing the ESP project, I
| noticed just how laggy VSCode is.
|
| It could do with a few plugins, though. Copilot, and things
| like that.
| democracy wrote:
| Copilot works fine on eclipse
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Copilot works fine on eclipse
|
| TIL :-)
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I think the negativity should be towards Java and its
| sluggishness when it came to desktop applications.
|
| Eclipse was the effort that made it decent, and it took a long
| time before we had IDEs that were competitive for some
| languages. I remember the php extension being surprisingly
| good.
| sam_bristow wrote:
| Most of _my_ negativity towards Eclipse is all the shit-tier
| tools built on top by embedded software vendors.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Sigh... I'm with you here. Like yes it's pretty cool to be
| able to configure your pinmux and peripheral clocks and all
| that directly from the IDE and have it end up as source in
| your project. But no it's not cool to not have a supported
| way to do a command-line build.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Some more details would be nice. What made it less than
| positive?
| seabird wrote:
| The IDE is pretty damn good. Plenty of shitty parts but all
| said and done, VS Code can't even scratch the way that I can
| rearrange the UI to fit everything I need to see when doing
| firmware development, at least not without a lot of screwing
| around. Really not looking forward to VS Code wiping it out in
| the next 5-10 years.
| elric wrote:
| I still use the Eclipse IDE on a daily basis for Java
| development. I like it a lot better than the alternatives. A
| lot of people seem to prefer IntelliJ's expensive bloatware,
| but that just doesn't do it for me.
|
| I will repeat my usual complaint: I wish the Eclipse Foundation
| would invest more into making the IDE better, and I wish they
| would make it easier for people to contribute to it.
| mark38848 wrote:
| I mean you still use Java, so you seem to really like
| sticking to your tools!
| brabel wrote:
| > IntelliJ's expensive bloatware
|
| I am pretty sure the free Community Edition is still much
| better than Eclipse.
| ayewo wrote:
| Is there really an IntelliJ iDea (Ultimate) Community
| Edition outside of Android Studio?
|
| I've also tried to use their products but by the time I
| need to, my 30-day has already expired so I just stick with
| Eclipse and VSCode.
| pledg wrote:
| Ultimate is paid, community is separate. You still get
| plenty https://www.jetbrains.com/products/compare/?produc
| t=idea&pro...
| Kwpolska wrote:
| There is "IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition", completely
| free forever. It's missing a few features compared to
| Ultimate, most notably the web development bits.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Maybe when they finally support JNI development instead of
| sticking us with a CLion license.
|
| That, an incremental Java compiler that isn't just using
| the one from Eclipse, not indexing every couple of minutes,
| and no 10 finger chord shortcuts.
| Kuraj wrote:
| > IntelliJ's (...) bloatware
|
| This isn't something I hear everyday. Care to explain?
| KronisLV wrote:
| I think it's a complaint of JetBrains IDEs loving to eat
| memory (and possibly having a large install size), which is
| true, although historically Eclipse, NetBeans and others
| have also had a similar reputation, with Eclipse also being
| modular to the point where some people's opinion of it has
| been soured due to bad tools built on top of it, as well as
| an arguably awkward workflow at times.
|
| Then again, it's all probably relative - most IDEs
| (including the likes of Visual Studio) are slow compared to
| something like Lazarus, VS Code can feel slow compared to
| Sublime or Vim but whether that matters much is up to the
| reader. Personally, I like the features that JetBrains
| tools have, and those are more or less my daily drivers (I
| pay for the Ultimate package of all tools, alongside
| GitKraken, MobaXTerm and some other software), others might
| differ in that aspect.
|
| That said, I don't think that JetBrains Fleet is quite as
| good as VS Code yet, so I use VSC for my more lightweight
| editing needs or on lower spec devices, sometimes also
| dropping down to Notepad++/Gedit or Nano for simple
| text/config files as well.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah I agree. Eclipse was overall a bad experience and I think
| most people saw it the same way so it does seem odd to reuse
| the brand. I mean the people involved in Eclipse obviously like
| Eclipse so they probably don't realise.
|
| The thing I hated most was the workspace concept. I don't want
| to put all my projects in one directory or have to make a
| workspace just to open a project. In every other IDE you can
| just open a project without weird and confusing restrictions.
|
| It also crashed quite a lot - not fully, you just get a dialog
| box saying there was a null pointer exception.
|
| Also every app I've used that has been based on Eclipse has
| been awful. Teamcenter was probably the worst. So slow you
| could literally watch it drawing widgets.
|
| The one positive I will say is that there's a state machine
| plugin that's really good, and it uses the Eclipse Layout
| Kernel which is so good at layout out diagrams that it's been
| ripped out of Eclipse and even converted to JavaScript.
| itronitron wrote:
| Yes, very positive, I've used Eclipse for many years, primarily
| for Java. I also have a license for IntelliJ but how it does
| code completion and other aspects of it's UI have always
| irritated me.
|
| So I'm back to Eclipse, and will probably check out Theia as
| well. Hopefully they add Go support if it isn't already there.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| For me it was so so so bad when I used it. Buggy, slow
| confusing and weird. I hated it with a passion. Admittedly I
| never used it vanilla but only as a base of other crappy tools.
|
| But that was Java eclipse. And I kinda hate everything related
| to Java.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Get it into the Debian repos and I'll try it. If it's a good
| replacement for vscode, getting it into the major distros will
| get them a massive userbase in a month. Most people don't want to
| install MS garbage on their computer, and they are willing to
| take a mild quality hit in order to avoid it.
|
| Otherwise I'm not messing with something likely to disappear
| randomly. I value my workflow.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| i still have nightmares of waiting for eclipse to load
| anta40 wrote:
| What kind of setup? I remember fondly using Eclipse as main IDE
| during university days (2005-2006). Latex, C++, Java etc. On my
| 256 MB laptop, it was reasonably fast.
|
| Of course, many many years ago, I switched to IntelliJ (Android
| obviously is the main reason).
| airstrike wrote:
| First thing I thought is "damn, that looks a lot like vscode"
| JasonSage wrote:
| Eclipse Theia IDE is to Eclipse as Visual Studio Code is to
| Visual Studio?
|
| I think the naming is much less interesting/important than the
| idea, but lots of folks seem only interested in whether the name
| is good or bad. In my experience, a good project tends to
| eventually live by a good name, and the early focus should be on
| the outcome. It looks to me like the folks behind this project
| know exactly what they're doing.
| curiousdeadcat wrote:
| I've been following Theia for years (hi GitPod people), though
| mostly lost interest when vscode started being browser
| accessible, and back when they were using that old UI stack.
|
| But I'm confused, how does this compare with code-server, or
| openvscode-server?
|
| I use the latter in a web browser to do fully remote dev on my
| beefy machine hooked up to Google Fiber.
|
| It kind of seems like this isn't something I need to consider,
| unless I wanted to ship my own custom white-labeled IDE.
| (Which... Nah, and why?)
| cbxyp wrote:
| because the tooling for VS code extensions to be part of the VS
| code UI is lackluster. It shoehorns people and prevents the
| development of something like a fully integrated SQL workbench.
| Or a form editor. Or reusable property panes, editor widget UI.
| If vscode had those things, it would be a proper IDE. Take for
| example this outline view:
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eclipse-theia/theia/master...
| - not something that would be easy to integrate into VS code as
| an extension. Very nice work. Why VS code doesn't have it is
| probably related to cannibalizing other MS products.
| basil-rash wrote:
| Odd example - VS Code already has an outline view, and it'd
| be very easy to build one yourself as an extension if you
| wanted. (TreeViewProvider API).
|
| With the addition of Webview Editors and Views there's not
| really anything an extension can't do to _its_ UI. Notice
| this is very different from saying there's not much an
| extension can't do to _VS Code_ 's UI. Extensions are given a
| box, and they gotta stay in it. Personally, I'm fine with
| that.
| thiht wrote:
| The outline view has been part of VSCode for years though
| aniviacat wrote:
| On the Eclipse Theia IDE download page [0] it still says:
|
| >NOTE: The Eclipse Theia IDE is currently in beta.
|
| Does "exits beta" mean that it will at some point in the future
| exit the beta? I understood it to mean that it is out of beta
| today.
|
| [0]: https://theia-ide.org/#theiaidedownload
| nusaru wrote:
| Yeah, here's a quote from the 1.50 release post last week:
|
| > Although Theia IDE is still in beta, the steady progress
| suggests that we will soon be exiting the beta phase.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| So it's another reskined VS Code.
| atombender wrote:
| It is not. There is no shared IDE code.
| cbxyp wrote:
| Used this a few years ago in early stages before VS code remote
| was a thing. It's very useful to add some interface extensibility
| components into VS Code's framework. I suspect microsoft made
| some intentional design decision to make this harder to do in VS
| code's apis, totally eschewing any real editor extensibility in
| favor of a "apps in the editor, not extending the editor" design
| vs Atom's much more open ended allowance for modifications. For
| example, if you wanted to make a form builder in VS code for VS
| code extensions - that would not be usable outside of the Webview
| tab functionality without modifying the editor source. Glad
| eclipse foundation recognized this and is providing some
| groundwork to make a real IDE out of VS code. Theia was also the
| first to provide support for running vscode-as-a-platform and run
| via web browser, at least support that was functional and
| working.
| dmix wrote:
| > I suspect microsoft made some intentional design decision to
| make this harder to do in VS code's apis,
|
| That's probably giving how software is made at these orgs too
| much credit.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah I'm always amazed how Microsoft can make both the best
| performing electron app, Vs code, and the absolute worst one
| in ms teams. At the same time. Clearly zero coordination
| going on there :(
| bad_user wrote:
| When comparing VS Code with Atom, vim, Emacs, others, an
| underappreciated fact is that extensions just work, and are
| very easy to install and configure, which has much to do with
| its model. Atom was unusable for me, because, as you installed
| extensions, something always broke.
|
| This is also similar to the old Firefox vs Chrome. The former
| was great for power users, but it crashed a lot and Firefox
| installs of regular people were riddled with insecure
| extensions that broke the browser and that couldn't even be un-
| installed.
|
| VS Code does have flaws, but having limited extensions is not
| one of them, IMO.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| > VS Code does have flaws, but having limited extensions is
| not one of them, IMO.
|
| Exactly. Of course as somebody who writes extensions I'd
| sometimes like the possibility to change stuff at a "deeper"
| level - like having multi-line text decorations. But as a
| user I really prefer the model to the Emacs' one. Emacs (and
| I guess *vim) works best if the user writes all the code
| themselves.
| sureglymop wrote:
| They don't "just work". There are many many extensions that
| require external tools in the path etc. and some even go as
| far as to try to download such dependencies (and leave them
| on the system). Generally one should definitely read the
| extension documentation and there may be some manual steps
| needed (meaning that they don't just work).
|
| It's true that the most popular extensions work fairly well
| though.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| For the purposes of the general end user who really doesn't
| care whether extra dependencies are on the system, it does
| "just work." Indeed, they might even _want_ such behavior,
| that plugins manage their own dependencies without any end
| user input.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Yep, I routinely get breaking changes with my neovim config,
| so I now keep both VSCode and neovim installed.
| gradientsrneat wrote:
| I keep hearing of bugs and breaking changes in neovim, with
| no sign of it affecting the upstream vim. I am a little
| frustrated that neovim could give people a bad impression
| of vim from a stability/compatibility standpoint. Unlike
| emacs and atom, where you can modify the editor
| fundamentally, vim is extended with sandboxed scripting
| language(s) (I assume the same is true with neovim as
| well), so there's no fundamental reason why an update
| should break your plugins. Conflicts can occur due to
| overlapping hooks, but VSCode has the same problem. To be
| clear, I'm not suggesting people switch their text editor.
|
| Would love to hear from a more seasoned vim user if I'm
| missing some egregious stumbles in vim's updates that
| affected their workflow.
| phaedrix wrote:
| I've been using vim and neovim for over 15 years with many
| 10s of plugins and I can probably count on one or two hands
| when an update has caused problems.
|
| Also use Arch for about as long.
|
| It's so odd to me when someone says that updates break
| their vim or Arch frequently.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| There are so many threads about it on /r/neovim that
| people have started to ask just _which_ plugins actually
| work together cohesively without breaking [0], something
| that is not asked about for VSCode. Just go through their
| "Needs Help" flair and you'll see lots of issues [1]. For
| me, I also use tens of plugins but inevitably something
| breaks at least once every couple of weeks.
|
| [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/1c9ev8n/over
| whelmed...
|
| [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/neovim/search?sort=new&restr
| ict_sr=...
| ossusermivami wrote:
| just use lazyvim[1] and be done with it! some people
| takes care of the compatibility and they are probably
| more competent than you (i mean a newcomer who starts
| writing their nvim config)
|
| [1] https://www.lazyvim.org/
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Clearly you didn't read any of the threads as it is
| sometimes even lazyvim that causes these
| incompatibilities:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/1dgtyzw/lazynvim
| _do...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/1dp47gi/lazyvim_
| own...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Theia: Cloud and Desktop IDE_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22792258 - April 2020 (183
| comments)
|
| _Eclipse Theia 1.0 - Open-Source Alternative to Visual Studio
| Code_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738607 - March
| 2020 (147 comments)
|
| _Theia: A cloud and desktop IDE framework implemented in
| TypeScript_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19466001 -
| March 2019 (12 comments)
|
| _Theia - One IDE for Desktop and Cloud_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14687858 - July 2017 (58
| comments)
| sporedro wrote:
| Is there actually any point in using it? My initial thought was
| they would allow a more "atom" approach while still keeping all
| the vscode functionality.
|
| But it looks like it's aimed more for "building your own IDE"
| without having to start from scratch, feels just like the old
| eclipse.
|
| Maybe I'm missing something but why would anyone bother using
| this?
| richardw wrote:
| My read was different. That this is an IDE with plugins and
| whatnot, and they have a similarly named but entirely different
| offering:
|
| "Note that Eclipse Theia IDE is a separate component from the
| overall Theia project's related Eclipse Theia Platform, used to
| build IDEs and tools based on modern web technologies."
|
| No idea why they didn't brand them differently. The base is
| different (built more on VSCode platforms and not Theia the
| platform), unlike old Eclipse that had a split between the base
| and the IDE built from that base. I think that is very
| confusing.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Theia platform is the foundation to build custom IDE.
|
| TheiaIDE is one, dare I say official, implementation of an
| IDE on the platform.
|
| To me, that seems congruent.
| richardw wrote:
| Yup, on reading the actual Theia website I realise I got it
| wrong. Thanks :)
| fbdab103 wrote:
| I am becoming increasingly concerned with my reliance upon
| VSCode. With Microsoft's increasingly visible dark-pattern
| shenanigans, it feels inevitable that eventually the other shoe
| is going to drop.
|
| A few design decisions of the platform seemed designed to make
| it difficult to go elsewhere, and Microsoft keeps changing
| default plugins away from the fully open source versions to the
| Microsoft quasi-kinda-pinky-swear-open source variety. Which
| deprives the open source versions of mind share and development
| resources.
| catgary wrote:
| I'm ready to switch over to fleet for my ML/data science work
| load once they support plugins (so I can use Ruff) and
| Jupyter notebooks (the notebooks are mainly for debugging).
| claytonwramsey wrote:
| For now, you may want to use VSCodium [1], which is a
| variant of VSCode which doesn't ship any non-free
| components (and also doesn't include Microsoft telemetry
| and such).
|
| [1]: https://vscodium.com/
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/docs/ind
| ex....
|
| > Even though we do not pass the telemetry build flags
| (and go out of our way to cripple the baked-in
| telemetry), Microsoft will still track usage by default.
| johnisgood wrote:
| What is meant by "usage"?
| toprerules wrote:
| I mean, what's holding you back from using neovim? Great
| plugins, same LSPs, anything that's missing you can code up
| yourself in Lua, works over ssh... what are you really
| gaining by using VSCode?
| aniviacat wrote:
| a gui
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| Sure, but how concretely does that hold you back? Not
| saying I can't imagine any possibilities, but guis aren't
| universally better for editing text. In fact I usually
| find the gui is what is holding me back, since I end up
| needing access over ssh/mosh or easier access to a
| terminal, and tools such as tmux provide much better
| (imo) ergonomics than I get with terminal-in-ide
| especially with the ability to zoom one split to
| fullscreen.
| spoiler wrote:
| I honestly don't remember the last time I used a terminal
| to edit files. I don't really miss vim that much since I
| still use vim shortcuts in VSCode. I briefly tried Emacs
| but a lot of the major modes for languages I used were
| too buggy and those were distracting me too much for it
| to be my daily driver (maybe I have ADHD, dunno)
|
| For what its worth, VSCode also works over SSH. There's a
| collection of plugins for working remotely or in
| containers.
|
| The main thing that drew me to VSCode originally was
| pretty good support for fonts and ligatures. And I think
| I also like some of the QoL plugins I use. The config is
| just JSON, and it's pretty easily tweakable to how I like
| it.
|
| I've heard good things about nvim and zed though, and I'm
| tempted to try them. But there's a bunch of
| idiosyncrasies and quirks that you get used to, so
| switched kinda feels like a chore
| fastasucan wrote:
| >but guis aren't universally better for editing text.
|
| Many of us use the code editor for a lot more than
| strictly editing text.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| Like what? That after all was my original question.
| alwillis wrote:
| There are plenty of GUIs for Neovim [1].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/topics/neovim-guis
| osigurdson wrote:
| neovim is quite a step change from normal keyboard and
| mouse type editors. I agree though, I think it ultimately
| everyone will be a neovim chad.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > what are you really gaining by using VSCode
|
| The out of the box experience is vastly superior to neovim,
| you have to configure a lot less stuff.
|
| The default keybindings are not esoteric.
|
| Adding support for a new language is just clicking a button
| to install the extension, you don't have to configure or
| install the LSP yourself (or even know what an LSP is).
|
| For me personally, better support for c#/.net.
|
| You can make a nice IDE with neovim and plugins and a GUI
| but you _do_ have to make it, whereas you just have to
| install vscode and you are done.
| oxidant wrote:
| Astronvim[0] is plug and play. Easy to add LSPs (Mason),
| easy to add syntax highlighting (TreeSitter), and easy to
| configure (Lua, no JSON).
|
| I can't stand VSCode due to personal preference [1], but
| I won't fault someone else using it. If configuration is
| stopping you from using neovim, use Astronvim or another
| pre built solution.
|
| [0] https://astronvim.com/ [1] my main beef is lack of
| support for my ingrained Jetbrains shortcuts and the find
| window being in the sidebar. How anyone can use the
| search results easily is behind me. I know you can move
| it, it's just annoying.
| mark38848 wrote:
| I use astronvim and still don't know how to get
| Purescript to work.
| asabla wrote:
| > For me personally, better support for c#/.net.
|
| I feel this one. Especially if you want to do anything
| with razor pages and/or Blazor.
|
| It's still workable. But the experience is far from VS
| Code and Visual Studio sadly
| goosejuice wrote:
| Lazyvim is pretty plug & play with room to grow.
|
| Zed and helix are good off the shelf alts.
|
| I think the days are pretty far gone for having to really
| do much work to have a nice nvim setup
| dmix wrote:
| As a long time neovim users and promoter, I switched
| because of community support of plugins. More of them, they
| are up to date with libraries immediately (important in JS
| more than other languages), and easier to google solutions.
|
| Also I tried switching to Astrovim so I spent less time
| maintaining my vim config and it ended up breaking as often
| as atttempt at switching to Linux distros (regardless of
| years of experience) so I chose stability.
| jmkni wrote:
| Honestly it's the learning curve
|
| I love the idea but when I try and use it, my productivity
| goes through the floor, and I've got work to do
| walterlw wrote:
| i'm a Python main trying out neovim (using kickstart) and
| couple of weeks in my journey is a bit frustrating as
| switching between virtual environments is a hassle, jupyter
| notebooks aren't quite useful outside the browser and
| setting up the dap has been a challenge. Setting up a fresh
| vscode install with all of the plugins 'launch.json's and
| takes me ~20 minutes at this point. Not giving up on neovim
| as telescope, treesitter and the no-electron experience are
| a joy
| fastasucan wrote:
| The seemingly lack of support of jupyter notebooks was
| the thing that kept me from giving it a honest try. I
| want the same experience as in the code editor.
| bitwize wrote:
| OK, now I'm really glad that Visual Studio Code was one of
| those "eh, pass" things for me (like GNOME) and I stuck it
| out with Emacs all this time.
|
| Microsoft's play appears to be soup-to-nuts control over
| every aspect of web developers' work -- from finding a job
| (linkedin) to source control (github) to libraries and
| dependency management (npm). Visual Studio Code fits neatly
| within this play. Windows may have lost web devs' hearts and
| minds in the 2000s-2010s, but Microsoft has pivoted to where
| they don't need Windows in order to capture the developers.
|
| Wait till Pluton takes hold in a few years, and you need a
| Microsoft account just to get to the bootloader.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| You think? I've always wondered why they bought those
| things.
|
| I really really hate LinkedIn by the way. But it was like
| that before the takeover. Nothing really changed for better
| or for worse.
| noduerme wrote:
| I very, very reluctantly switched from Eclipse to VS Code a
| couple years ago, because certain Eclipse plugins I relied on
| were no longer maintained. VS is pretty good, but I've never
| been comfortable with its place in the MS ecosystem, and I
| worry too about it turning to free-to-pay junk down the line.
| At least with Eclipse you really could just download and run
| years-old versions if you wanted to keep your particular
| plug-ins and favorite setup working.
| dmix wrote:
| These editors are as much the sum of the plugins and the
| community around it, not simply the editor itself.
| Otherwise Vim/Emacs wouldn't have survived as long.
| Microsoft probably knows it has to play it safe.
|
| As much as there are a few bigger name commercial/close
| sourced ones the average dev is using 20 other niche ones
| run by volunteers.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| There was a decent critique from a couple years ago on this,
| not sure how relevant it still is:
| https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ (HN Discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32657709 ) (Aug 2022)
| goosejuice wrote:
| I don't find vscode sticky at all.
|
| Now cursor, they have something no one else has and sadly
| it's a codium fork.
| Asraelite wrote:
| I've been using the Cursor editor recently. Unfortunately
| it's based on VS Code, is closed source, and is tightly
| coupled with Microsoft/OpenAI. But the full AI integration
| blows everything else I've used out of the water. I feel
| significantly more productive with it than any other editor.
|
| I think in the coming years as LLMs become more powerful, the
| productivity gap between using AI to code and not using it
| will only increase. It will become difficult to justify not
| using AI, despite the privacy concerns. I really hope that
| open source alternatives can keep up and provide viable
| alternatives to editors like Cursor.
| devbent wrote:
| Cursor is amazing, and you can now use Claude as the
| backing AI instead of OpenAI, if you so wish.
| cedws wrote:
| I really would suggest not using Cursor, unless you're
| working purely on open source stuff you don't care about
| sharing. All of your code goes via Cursor's servers, even
| using your own LLM API key.
|
| https://www.cursor.com/privacy
| zer0zzz wrote:
| Nope. Nope. Nope. There is literally no fond memory I've ever had
| of anything relating to eclipse.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Same here. I will happily dance on the ashes of the last
| Eclipse repo.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Can people stop using electron for editors? This is why software
| quality is dropping. People are ok with shoddy slow bloated apps
| as their primary editing interface.
| mdasen wrote:
| I dislike Electron as much as the next person, but I think a
| big part of the issue is that there really aren't great cross-
| platform options out there and it's hard to keep a consistent
| UX across platforms if you're reimplementing things for each
| OS.
|
| I guess I'd ask: what would you (or other people here) use?
| There really isn't one that offers a great native experience
| cross-platform.
|
| Flutter won't ship Chromium, but it'll bring along its own
| runtime, widgets, and rendering engine rather than using what's
| provided by the OS. .NET MAUI uses native widgets, but it's
| difficult to create one API that uses native widgets on
| different operating systems given that there are subtle
| differences between similar widgets on different operating
| systems. MAUI Blazor Hybrid solves that issue and doesn't ship
| Chromium, but you aren't getting native widgets.
|
| I think for an editor to be successful, it needs to be
| available on Mac, Windows, and Linux and it's really hard to
| maintain parity if you're developing the UX separately. As I
| said, I'm not an Electron fan, but it does allow for easy
| parity across platforms.
|
| In this case, the reason it's Electron is that it's not just
| meant to challenge VS Code, but it's essentially the same
| codebase as VS Code - like how Edge is the same code base as
| Chrome. The point of the project was a VS Code that was truly
| free software rather than an open source core with a bunch of
| Microsoft stuff around it.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > It's hard to keep a consistent UX across platforms if
| you're reimplementing things for each OS.
|
| Funnily, I thought that was the point.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| What is the point? Reimplementing things for each OS to
| make it hard to keep a consistent UX across platforms?
| trealira wrote:
| I think they're saying that the point of each OS having
| different UI frameworks is so that all apps on that
| particular OS have a cohesive aesthetic and "feel
| native." That necessarily contradicts the desire to have
| the same UX across various OSes, however. (And I think
| "feeling native" is something no popular programs have
| done for a long time.)
| nsonha wrote:
| "Feeling native" is overrated. Most users want a fast
| reponsive UI, THAT kind of "native".
|
| They could not care less if this app is different from
| that app (they are 2 apps, duh).
|
| They would feel annoyed though if the same app has
| different UIs because someone at Apple or Microsoft's has
| some opinion about UX
| Kuraj wrote:
| I don't know about that.
|
| Cohesive is important but what's also important is
| playing nice with the respective OS's design guidelines.
| For example, take dialog boxes and the order and
| positioning of "OK, Cancel" buttons.
| bitwize wrote:
| > "Feeling native" is overrated. Most users want a fast
| reponsive UI, THAT kind of "native".
|
| We seem to have forgotten it now, but back in the day we
| had this idea that a platform should have a standard UI
| to which all applications conform, so that the user can
| transfer knowledge in using one application to all the
| others, and they don't have to memorize a dozen different
| ways of operating to use a dozen different applications.
|
| To that end, dating all the way back to 1984, Apple
| developed user interface guidelines that specified things
| like how dialog boxes were to be laid out, what the
| various menus and options should be, and what were the
| keyboard shortcuts for common operations.
|
| This was _the_ revolution that enabled all sorts of
| creatives to integrate computers into their creative
| work, and for the longest time it was Apple 's advantage
| in the marketplace. Mac users, many of whom were
| creatives in the print, graphic design, music, and
| film/television spaces, were very picky about their UIs
| because they spent so much professional time in them. If
| you did not conform exactly, down to the pixel, to
| Apple's user interface guidelines, the users would notice
| right away, and you would be one-moused so hard in
| MacWorld your business might never recover. (That's
| another quasi-lost thing about the Mac ecosystem: people
| liked _paying_ for good quality software.)
|
| Accordingly, it was accepted dogma to never, ever, _ever_
| use a "cross-platform UI framework" if you targeted Mac,
| because the cross-platform frameworks never got the fine
| details right, and the fine details _mattered_. It 's
| called "polish", and it's something the open source world
| never got (thanks in no small part to fucking X windows
| and all its stupid "toolkits"), and now that open source
| and the web have eaten everything, the rest of the
| programming world has forgotten.
| cageface wrote:
| I think Zed is promising but they had to implement their
| whole UI from scratch in Rust.
| dualogy wrote:
| > _but I think a big part of the issue is that there really
| aren 't great cross-platform options out there and it's hard
| to keep a consistent UX across platforms if you're
| reimplementing things for each OS_
|
| All that's needed is taking TextAdept or KDevelop or Kate
| (these are all cross-platform already) or some such editor
| code-base as a starting point and (A) bringing in VSCode's
| NodeJS-based extension host and (B) implementing out VSCode's
| surface extension APIs against that native backing mature
| editor code-base. Voila, all the great VSX extensions out
| there are salvaged and ready to use, with no more Electron or
| MS dependency.
|
| Quite icky and boilerplatey though, not as sexy as starting
| yet-another-whole-new-editor from scratch... plus the whole
| latent "ever-having-to-keep-catching-up-to MS VSCode"
| responsibility ... no wonder no one's on it. Neither am I.
|
| VSCode's extension APIs' restrictions wrt GUI extensibility
| are a god-send to any theoretical alternative implementors of
| those APIs. It's just that there aren't any =)
| Kuraj wrote:
| If .NET is an option (since you mentioned MAUI) I would have
| gone with Avalonia.
|
| It's like WPF, which was used for Visual Studio, except it's
| cross-platform and can target Windows, macOS, Linux, web,
| iOS, Android (and from what I can tell, even TV). Personally
| I've had nothing but a great time with it.
| tored wrote:
| It exist cross platform GUI frameworks that is maintained by
| much smaller organizations than Microsoft, if they can do it,
| Microsoft can do it too.
| pjmlp wrote:
| As someone that is programming since 1986, wrote software
| across multiple 16 bit platforms, and has his own share of
| Web and desktop development experince, it is more like people
| aren't willing to put in the effort, more than anything else
| as lame excuses.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Collaboration capabilities are a high rank priority for me. After
| years of not really getting anywhere, there's been some promising
| movement this year, but still in long open draft form.
| https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia/issues/2842
| lsllc wrote:
| For me at least, tree-sitter + LSP support is a must in any
| editor/IDE. Recent entrants like Zed are setting a very high bar
| along with really quite stellar updates to neovim and emacs in
| the form of LazyVim, Doom/Spacemacs etc.
|
| Glad to see more competition in the space.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I agree. In neovim It's lately been fun to make my own tree
| sitter based scripts. For example, I managed to very quickly
| add syntax highlighting to my own DSL that is embedded in rust
| strings.
|
| And to counter the old trope that one ends up spending more
| time tinkering with the editor than being productive, it is
| just fun and that's enough of a reason to do it :)
|
| Can't wait to try out zed more once it becomes more stable on
| linux.
| NonEUCitizen wrote:
| What does this do that VS Codium does not? Why did it take seven
| years of work?
| ryanmccullagh wrote:
| Finally. VScode is a landing zone for malicious extensions.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| What makes this one different though, besides being controlled
| by a non-Microsoft entity? Do they have some
| policies/mechanisms in place to prevent supply chain attacks?
| thrownaway561 wrote:
| They really need to change the name to something else. I don't
| know a single person that has used Eclipse in the past and
| thought that it was a good IDE. I think most of us had no choice
| but to use it back when we did and just struggled through it.
| elric wrote:
| I'm continuously amazed by these kinds of comments. I love
| Eclipse for Java, it's easily the best IDE I've ever used.
| There is no struggling.
| johnyzee wrote:
| I share your befuddlement. Eclipse is good and overall better
| than even paid proprietary IntelliJ. I think there is a lot
| of bandwagon jumping, especially with newish devs.
| fastasucan wrote:
| I think the point of the comment was how Eclipse was
| perceived in the past, not how good it is today.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Try IntelliJ IDEA someday.
| peterashford wrote:
| I've used Eclipse, Netbeans and Intellij extensively for Java
| dev. Eclipse is my least favourite. That said, I haven't used
| Eclipse in years and Netbeans has been lagging in innovation
| since going to Apache
| alkonaut wrote:
| Agree it does them no service using that name. It's miles worse
| than IntelliJ or VS. Even if it became much better in recent
| years (haven't used it for over 10) its first 10 years have
| many of us so many scars we'll not go near it, and we'll think
| twice about using something with a similar name or origin. I
| know a few who still swear by Eclipse but they are the kind
| that think the Linux desktop audio stack is great because it's
| open source too.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Although I use IntelliJ nowadays, I was pretty happy using
| Eclipse during the 15+ years I used it.
|
| Eclipse just lacks the final polish of IntelliJ (which is
| understandable), but it is a perfectly serviceable IDE, and I
| wouldn't mind to use it today.
| bogwog wrote:
| Used this recently and liked it. I don't use VS Code but I see
| how this is a valuable addition to the ecosystem. Not only does
| it provide an actually open alternative independent from
| Microsoft, the project has produced open-vsx.org as an open
| registry for VS Code + Theia compatible extensions.
|
| Also, the main focus of Theia (and Eclipse in general) is to
| provide a framework/base for creating a custom IDE product, not
| necessarily to provide a working IDE out of the box. This means
| e.g. companies providing custom IDEs for their embedded platforms
| can now use a more modern VS Code style base instead of the
| ancient Eclipse desktop editors.
| appplication wrote:
| Competition is good, and I haven't used this yet so I'll
| withhold judgement on this. But my experience with vscode
| hasn't been particularly nice, so my enthusiasm for it as a
| base is a bit mixed. I've found it to be pretty slow and often
| buggy for e.g. syntax highlighting, when compared to something
| like pycharm.
|
| It's likely I'm just an idiot who doesn't know how to set up my
| extensions/config, but if it takes some high level of intellect
| to do so then I think it's still fair to call it a poor UX.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| > "The main focus of Theia (and Eclipse in general) is to
| provide a framework/base for creating a custom IDE product, not
| necessarily to provide a working IDE out of the box."
|
| Yep. An important repo Theia has is the 'Theia Blueprint' repo
| so one wanting to make a custom IDE has a good place out of the
| box to start.
|
| FWIW, I prototyped gluing together existing plaintext
| accounting tools (Beancount, Fava, vscode-beancount) under
| Eclipse Theia a while back [0]. The potential of using a
| vscode-style base still seems a promising for certain
| applications but there's a learning curve to figuring out how
| the various dependencies and quirks of building an electron app
| work.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/seltzered/beancolage
| LoganDark wrote:
| Looks like VS Code. They copied the bad design.
| elric wrote:
| I rather dislike that weird side ribbon thing. Some time ago I
| thought I'd try and build a version without it, but that wasn't
| as easy as I would have liked. Maybe I'll give it another go.
| ColonelPhantom wrote:
| The side ribbon of VSCode is called the Activity Bar. You can
| put it on top of the sidebar (making it more like a tab bar)
| or disable it entirely (which makes it a lot harder to open
| the sidebar or change the page it's on).
|
| It's as simple as right click it -> Activity Bar Position ->
| ...
| fastasucan wrote:
| You can just disable it in the settings, quite a lot easier
| than building a new version without it.
| brabel wrote:
| Even JetBrains, which makes actual good IDEs, is copying VSCode
| with its new editor, Fleet...
|
| And even the new IDEA UI (which is still opt-in, thank god - I
| tried it but moved back because the "old" UI is just clearly
| more ergonomic to me) is clearly VSCode-like.
| makmanalp wrote:
| Eclipse always left me with the impression that it was more
| interested in architecting generically extensible platforms and
| protocols moreso than a nice, clean, user ready tool with all the
| kinks worked out. I was so scarred from Eclipse and OSGI and
| Equinox and xml manifest files and configurations and project
| import that never worked properly, that I never touched anything
| but vim for a whole decade, until first VSCode and then IntelliJ
| eventually won me back over by being /so/ incredibly polished
| that almost everything worked on the first try and with no
| configuration. Judging by the other comments here, I'm not alone
| in thinking that that impression hasn't gone away, and they
| aren't helping it now. From the article:
|
| > Note that Eclipse Theia IDE is a separate component from the
| overall Theia project's related Eclipse Theia Platform, used to
| build IDEs and tools based on modern web technologies.
|
| So you got the Theia project, the Eclipse Theia Platform, and the
| Eclipse Theia IDE, all fully separate things. "Ah" they will say,
| "what's so hard to understand? It's a project that works on an
| IDE development platform under the larger Eclipse umbrella, with
| which we built an IDE, but of course it has nothing to do with
| the original Eclipse IDE". None of which makes me want to use it
| or means anything to me.
|
| When you go to https://theia-ide.org/ the big text says:
|
| > An Open, Flexible and Extensible Platform to efficiently
| develop and deliver Cloud & Desktop IDEs and tools with modern
| web technologies.
|
| Dear god, please put that stuff on theia-platform.org or
| something instead, and market the platform separately. I know
| you're proud of it, but stop telling me about it please, I'm not
| trying to develop IDEs, which is an extremely narrow niche. "It
| can host VS Code extensions" and "vendor-neutral" is pretty much
| the only notable things from my POV - which is a perfectly great
| selling point, mind you - and they bury those below the fold.
|
| There's a reason you want this: the more people use Theia, the
| more people will choose to use it as an extension platform.
| Otherwise it's likelier to go the way of the original Eclipse IDE
| (whose homepage notably still doesn't say "blazing fast", "rock
| solid" and "works out of the box" but has room for a zillion
| other things like "preferences page for Generic Text Editor" and
| "jar viewer").
|
| There's also a reason why almost every editor website starts with
| massive screenshots of the tool itself, because people want to be
| able to imagine what it would be like to use a new tool before
| taking the big step to actually try. This is marketing 101. I
| wish they'd just flat out copy a competitor's page, and bill
| themselves as "everything you get from VSCode, but actually
| extensible and actually open source. By the way, look at the cool
| IDEs other people built on top of this, if you want to do that
| too, check out theia platform".
|
| It could be great, but I'm just seeing so much self sabotage, it
| makes me sad.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Eclipse is kind of a monstrous organization and it's heavily
| rooted in European rather than Silicon Valley organizational
| theory.
|
| There's a lot of design by committee and other insanity so
| expecting a coherent marketing message is asking a lot.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| That's looks pretty cool. I'll try replacing VS Code with it and
| see how it works for me.
| w10-1 wrote:
| With VSC, the only extensions are those MS builds API's for. It's
| hub and spoke integration, for a few big leaders and many tiny
| followers.
|
| With Eclipse (Theia or otherwise), it's fully open, with a large
| number of medium-sized groups. There's much more flexibility, but
| more opportunity for integration trouble (and more appreciation
| for those who do it right).
|
| The ecosystem has benefited from Java's open-sourcing and
| becoming the default organization e.g., for jakarta, but it never
| really recovered from the loss of IBM as the big dog driving
| enterprise (or the transition to Eclipse 4 style UI's).
| greatgib wrote:
| I'm so annoyed at the fact that there is almost no more
| competition in the field with everyone using and relying on the
| same core (Monaco) under Microsoft control.
|
| In addition, the editor is ok but not particularly good. Sadly a
| lot of users are liking it because they never really experience
| something different.
|
| Even if not perfect, I would recommend Kate and kdevelop that are
| incredible once you know how to use them
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Interesting. What I hate about Vs code is that Microsoft limits
| all their good add-ons from running on the open source version.
| It's really annoying because there is no official version on my
| platform. Not that I'd willingly install MS spyware anyway. But
| the open-source version, ok.
|
| It's typical Microsoft. Even when they pretend to do something
| good there's always a catch and an agenda.
|
| On the other hand, 'Eclipse' gives me nightmares when it comes to
| IDEs.
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