[HN Gopher] Devs sound alarm after Microsoft subtracts C/C++ ext...
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       Devs sound alarm after Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS
       Code forks
        
       Author : Dotnaught
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2025-04-24 22:18 UTC (41 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
        
       | 3np wrote:
       | Reminder: https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
        
       | kstrauser wrote:
       | And this is why I'm using Zed today. I'm deadly serious. I was a
       | huge proponent of VSCode at first but I've soured on it, and now
       | I don't want my workflow to depend on it in any way.
       | 
       | Awesome software, but I don't trust the upstream org further than
       | I must.
        
         | lysace wrote:
         | Still using VSCode, but you kind of know that's it's going to
         | go sour eventually. It is Microsoft. :/
         | 
         | I figure e.g. emacs will always be there when that happens.
         | 
         | All I need is a Github Copilot clone and a good code search
         | feature.
         | 
         | Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when
         | switching between git branches.
         | 
         | Oh and the ssh remote extension.
        
           | znpy wrote:
           | Emacs user here, have used vscode in the past.
           | 
           | Yep, vscode is more intuitive.
           | 
           | However emacs is mostly the kind of thing you dedicate a
           | couple of months of discomfort and enjoy for the rest of your
           | life. Quite literally.
           | 
           | Spending some money on the "mastering emacs" book
           | (https://www.masteringemacs.org/) is worth imho.
           | 
           | Bonus point: little by little you start enjoying doing more
           | stuff in emacs. It's a meme, but it's true.
        
             | lysace wrote:
             | I spent 20 years using emacs before vscode. MS made some
             | very real and very usable innovations. Emacs
             | hackers/maintainers would be wise to copy them, like
             | Microsoft copied things from emacs.
             | 
             | It's a bit like the UI aspect of the browser wars. Everyone
             | wins.
        
             | kstrauser wrote:
             | I second all this. I'm using Zed today, but I was using
             | Emacs for 20 years, then Sublime/VSCode/etc. for a few, and
             | now Zed. If it disappears, I'm going right back to Emacs
             | without a moment's hesitation.
             | 
             | And "Mastering Emacs" is brilliant.
        
         | rs186 wrote:
         | So how do you get intellisense and debug C++ in Zed?
        
           | LoganDark wrote:
           | Zed uses open-source language servers. It just doesn't rely
           | on proprietary extensions.
           | 
           | I actually worked a bunch on the language server logic in Zed
           | trying to get a bunch of it to work on Windows. All I have to
           | say about that is: ugh.
        
           | yoyohello13 wrote:
           | clangd is an LSP. You can use it in any editor with LSP
           | support https://clangd.llvm.org/
        
         | hobs wrote:
         | Reminds when I excited to see Azure Data Studio adding Postgres
         | support, but it was actually a binary extension with no ability
         | to fix or change anything and no way for other useful databases
         | to extend and use the functionality; they had spent all the
         | time and effort to make sure nobody could do something like it
         | but them.
         | 
         | Weird, ADS is dead and nobody spent any time on it, I wonder
         | why.
        
       | bangaladore wrote:
       | To be clear, I'm don't like the Microsoft has a proprietary
       | Marketplace, but a company openly violating the terms of use for
       | their own profit is a bit much in my opinion.
       | 
       | > Cursor allegedly has been flouting Microsoft terms-of-service
       | rules for some time now by setting up a reverse proxy to mask its
       | network requests to the endpoints used by the Microsoft Visual
       | Studio Marketplace. This allows Cursor users to install VS Code
       | extensions from Microsoft's market. Other VS Code forks tend to
       | point to Open VSX, an alternative extension marketplace.
        
         | madeofpalk wrote:
         | Yeah, I've noticed this using cursor. I was surprised that the
         | extension marketplace seemed... identical to VS Code.
        
       | yoyohello13 wrote:
       | Look, if you willingly have any piece of your stack relying on
       | Microsoft you have to be ready for the rug pull. They WILL fuck
       | you, it's guaranteed.
        
         | znpy wrote:
         | Anything that's not gpl-licensed is going to pull the rug from
         | under your feet, people should have learned this by now.
         | 
         | Also, if you do open source contributions, never ever agree to
         | assign copyright to the project: doing so means the project
         | owners can relicense the code base, even towards proprietary
         | license.
        
         | aranchelk wrote:
         | Not to quibble, but VSCode (and GitHub for that matter) are
         | part of my tooling, not part of any of my stacks.
         | 
         | To me the former is tolerable, the latter is not.
        
       | rs186 wrote:
       | The intellisense from clangd is much better and faster than the
       | Microsoft C++ extension, if you can set up a
       | compile_commands.json. Although debugging still relies on the
       | Microsoft extension. Although I don't think it's going to be hard
       | to create an extension just for debugging (if it does not already
       | exist?)
        
         | Rucadi wrote:
         | Lldb and rr (midas) have vscode extensions
        
       | margorczynski wrote:
       | Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - straight from the MS standard
       | corporate playbook.
        
       | jonstewart wrote:
       | The hilarious part is that old fart C++ programmers (like me)
       | have been the ones most leery of VS Code. Microsoft's gonna
       | Microsoft, 'specially with compilers.
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-24 23:00 UTC)