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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    BBEdit

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ABBEdit is a text editor from Bare Bones software headquartered in Massachusetts.N/A

    Microsoft Visual Studio Code

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft offers Visual Studio Code, an open source text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.

    $0

    Pricing
    BBEditMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    BBEditMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    BBEditMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
    Considered Both Products
    Bare Bones Software
    Chose BBEdit
    No comparison. On my Mac, Microsoft Visual Studio Code was instantly buggy.
    Incentivized
    Chose BBEdit
    Compared to Brackets, BBEdit feels faster, leaner, and has more utility value. Brackets feel oriented towards coders specifically, whereas BBEdit is like a toolbox of text tools for a wide array of needs. I feel like the same is probably true for Visual Studio Code, but I have …
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    70 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    69 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    70 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    50 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    63 Answers
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    BBEditMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
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    User Ratings
    BBEditMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.5
    (7 ratings)
    9.5
    (104 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.4
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.4
    (21 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.7
    (7 ratings)
    9.7
    (23 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    BBEditMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Bare Bones Software
    I'm primarily a graphic designer who does occasional web development. For me, BBEdit works very well. I use it both for developer projects (editing code, editing system files) and for general text processing (cleaning up, formatting, or extracting text). I like that it offers real-time previews of edits to web project files. It comes with some nice editor themes and supports adding more or customizing them. I expect that for some coders, it will be inadequate. It is not an IDE. On the other end of the spectrum, someone who expects an experience more like Microsoft Word will be very disappointed; or if they wanted something more along the lines of Windows Notepad, they may find it to be overkill. It is an ASCII text editor with many advanced commands and tools built-in.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    As a general workhorse IDE, Microsoft Visual Studio Codee is unmatched. Building on the early success of applications such as Atom, it has long been the standard for electron based IDEs. It can be outshone using IDEs that are dedicated to particular platforms, such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code for .net and the Jetbrains IDEs for Java, Python and others. For remote collaborative development, something like Zed is ahead of VSCode live share, which can be quite flakey.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Bare Bones Software
    • BBEdit remembers what I had open, so I never have to worry about losing work when I accidentally close the software. It will hold onto information almost indefinitely, so that the next time I open a program, I can access the information that I may have forgotten to save. Thankfully, its save function is also very simple to use, so I recommend still saving your work as needed.
    • Scripts are the most important aspect of BBEdit for the company I work for. Being able to import scripts and create new ones all in the same location are great.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Integrate with the git repository very well.
    • Integrated copilot chat is very helpful to write code snippets and helps beginners to start with coding and development.
    • Great library of available extensions is one of the best features in Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
    • Dedicated Testing option to configure pytest and others are quite handy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Bare Bones Software
    • The cost of this product has just become too much for the functionality that most people need. You can find free or $10 tools that do what most people need to do.
    • The BBEdit program has lots of functionality, but could it be too much? Are there too many options?
    • It seems that there are too many upgrades.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • The customization of key combinations should be more accessible and easier to change
    • The auxiliary panels could be minimized or as floating tabs which are displayed when you click on them
    • A monitoring panel of resources used by Microsoft Visual Studio Code or plugins and extensions would help a lot to be able to detect any malfunction of these
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Bare Bones Software
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Solid tool that provides everything you need to develop most types of applications. The only reason not a 10 is that if you are doing large distributed teams on Enterprise level, Professional does provide more tools to support that and would be worth the cost.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Bare Bones Software
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code earns a 10 for its exceptional balance of power and simplicity. Its intuitive interface, robust extension ecosystem, and integrated terminal streamline development. With seamless Git integration and highly customizable settings, it adapts perfectly to any workflow, making complex coding tasks feel effortless for beginners and experts alike.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Bare Bones Software
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Overall, Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty reliable. Every so often, though, the app will experience an unexplained crash. Since it is a stand-alone app, connectivity or service issues don't occur in my experience. Restarting the app seems to always get around the problem, but I do make sure to save and backup current work.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Bare Bones Software
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty snappy in performance terms. It launches quickly, and tasks are performed quickly. I don't have a lot of integrations other than CoPilot, but I suspect that if the integration partner is provisioned appropriately that any performance impact would be pretty minimal. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles (unless you start adding plugins left and right).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Bare Bones Software
    I've been using BBEdit — no joke — for nearly three decades now. Believe it or not, I'm still getting "upgrade pricing" 13 versions later. Bare Bones' support has always been stellar, and pricing continues to be affordable compared to similar tools.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Active development means filing a bug on the GitHub repo typically gets you a response within 4 days. There are plugins for almost everything you need, whether it be linting, Vim emulation, even language servers (which I use to code in Scala). There is well-maintained official documentation. The only thing missing is forums. The closest thing is GitHub issues, which typically has the answers but is hard to sift through -- there are currently 78k issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Bare Bones Software
    BBEdit wins over TextEdit every time. They are as different as chalk and cheese. I am so glad we moved to BBEdit.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Visual Studio Code stacks up nicely against Visual Studio because of the price and because it can be installed without admin rights. We don't exclusively use Visual Studio Code, but rather use Visual Studio and Visual Studio code depending on the project and which version of source control the given project is wired up to.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Bare Bones Software
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    It is easily deployed with our Jamf Pro instance. There is actually very little setup involved in getting the app deployed, and it is fairly well self-contained and does not deploy a large amount of associated files. However, it is not particularly conducive to large project, multi-developer/department projects that involve some form of central integration.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Bare Bones Software
    • It saves me time, not only with web projects, but even with design, when I want to strip out formatting in text, I bring it in to BBEdit to clean it up.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Saves money by replacing suites of tools such as Visual Studio, IntelliJ, etc.
    • Speeds development time and developer environment setup time
    • Strengthens code quality with integrated autoformatting and linting
    • Strengths Git practices by keeping version control tightly connected with the code
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots