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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    Vim

    Score7.5 out of 10
    N/AVim (Vi IMproved) is a highly configurable, free to download and use, Modal Text Editor derived from the classic Unix vi editor. It is designed for terminal-based and graphical text manipulation, prioritizing keyboard-centric efficiency and high-fidelity control over source code and configuration files.

    $0

    Pricing
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeVim
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeVim
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Vim is available as a free download.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeVim
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    When you start using [Microsoft Visual Studio Code], it lands more on the "text editor" side of the spectrum, akin to Vim/Emacs/Sublime. Aligned with this, it's fast and easy to install and setup, and competes with the best of them as a great general purpose tool. But then it …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    I have been using Vim as both editor and IDE for development projects for a long time until I met Visual Studio Code.
    VS Code can provide the editing power of Vim through a plugin, plus many other benefits, thus it can easily replace Vim in most development use.
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    As I explained above, definitely switch to VSCode unless you are heavily invested/comfortable with the alternatives, in which case it may not be worth it for now. Vim users may differ, but did I mention VSCode also has a highly integrated and mature Vim plugin? I used to be a Vi…
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Overall, compared to all other open source text editors like Sublime Text, Vim, etc, I've noticed that the Visual Studio Code has been updated regularly which makes it work more efficiently and resolves any bugs on a continuous basis. I feel like VS Code has the speed like Subli…
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    As mentioned before, IDE's can be excellent with one thing, and the company we do a lot of things, so it's kind of annoying to have multiple programs, heavy ones to open your work, so just use one, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, personalize thanks to extensions, and you are …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Microsoft Visual Studio Code provides more flexibility and supports easy integration to different platforms (including cloud). It is more modular and lighter application as compared to other integrated development environments. Microsoft Visual Studio Code is easy to learn and …
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
    Sublime Text is strictly a text editor and it is the most robust around in my opinion. It is better than Microsoft Visual Studio Code in this respect, but VS Code has other tools that make using it more streamlined. Brackets has a bit of the weakness of VS Code and Sublime …
    Incentivized
    Open Source
    Chose Vim
    Notepad++, while being a great editor, is very easy to get familiar with. However, being a serious developer, having the most efficient tool is much more important than having an easy tool. Vim’s speed is very much faster than that of notepad++. Moreover, the amount of plugins …
    Incentivized
    Chose Vim
    I prefer Vim simply because it's as simple as apps like Notepad, Notepad++, or gedit, but as feature rich as Microsoft Visual Studio. The startup time is quick, the response time is quick, it never freezes. Vim always "just works." Vim can be downloaded in a few seconds (if …
    Incentivized
    Chose Vim
    It is hard to compare Vim to many other packages in the developer's stack of tools. It mainly does one thing, edit text, and does it better than anything else. For instance, you can't really compare it to Visual Studio Code because VS actually has a Vim plug-in so you can …
    Incentivized
    Chose Vim
    Vim is a text editor that strives for simplicity. It does that well, but when you need something at the next level, take a look at the above two. Visual Studio Code is a fantastic, free code editor that makes most of my workflow easy.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    70 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    69 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    70 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    50 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    63 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeVim
    Small Businesses
    BBEdit
    Score10 out of 10
    BBEdit
    Score10 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Vim
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Notepad++
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Vim
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Sublime Text
    Score8.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeVim
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.5
    (104 ratings)
    10.0
    (9 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.4
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.4
    (21 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.7
    (23 ratings)
    6.0
    (5 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft Visual Studio CodeVim
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    Open Source
    I would recommend Vim in any scenario where text files have to be viewed, created, or edited on GNU/Linux computers. Regardless if you need to quickly change a few things in a configuration file, or you need to write up a full document, Vim is great. I wouldn't use Vim to view, edit, or create anything that requires "rich-text". In other words, if you need to format the text (bolding, font colours, word-art, etc), then Vim isn't the tool to use.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    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
    Open Source
    • The efficient modal editing makes it very fast to write/edit code as I think of it.
    • The customization and wide range of plugins let me do very specific things and automate parts of my workflow.
    • The fact that it runs inside a terminal simplifies my window management and just becomes another Tmux window in my workflow.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
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    Open Source
    • Without a doubt the hardest program to learn. It is a completely different paradigm of thinking compared to other editors
    • By default it doesn't have lots of fancy features you would find in larger IDE programs like code completion and linking
    • It lives in the command line so a user has to be comfortable with this interface
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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
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    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    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
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    Open Source
    I don't consider the steep learning curve to be a hinderance on the overall usability. I would rate this a ten, but to be honest a lot of people do get hung up at the beginning and just abandon it. However, for people who have made the moderate effort to get over the hump, nothing can be more usable.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    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
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    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    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
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    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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
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    Open Source
    There is no commercial support for Vim. Thus, it will not get a mark beyond 5. However, community support is very good. You can easily find solutions for most of the problems in the community.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    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
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    Open Source
    Vim's keybindings are a lot more complex than Notepad++. With that, comes a whole bunch of capability that Notepad++ just can't match. Emacs is comparable, in terms of capabilities--because Vim is built into so many unix systems, I chose to learn it instead of Emacs. Knowing both probably isn't a bad idea, but there's enough to learn in either camp to keep you busy
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    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
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    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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
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    Open Source
    • It always increases productivity.
    • Sometimes feature discovery is not easy. It could be documented well like how to install a plugin and if it supported well or not.
    Incentivized
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