Microsoft Visual Studio Code: Cohesive Front End Development
August 29, 2019

Microsoft Visual Studio Code: Cohesive Front End Development

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a great consolidation of features to make a seamless development environment. It is nice to be able to build, edit, and run programs from one integrated tool. The editor has integrated code completion and support for hundreds of languages. With the popularity of Node and Javascript in general, however, it has really been tailored to be the go-to development tool for those platforms.

Pros

  • IntelliSense code completion
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Integrated terminal
  • Built in scripting tools
  • Cross-platform. Windows, Mac, Linux

Cons

  • It's built on Javascript itself, so it can have trouble handling larger files.
  • It is still a new product, and even with the backing of a behemoth like Microsoft, you will occasionally run into bugs here and there.
  • It is not a true IDE so it lacks some of the tools from that kind of environment like scaffolding and Microsoft's Team Foundation Server
  • Simplified toolset. If you want, it can be your go-to for small web projects without the need for an assortment of other programs.
  • Open source and free so there is no initial cost
  • It works like most other editors and command-line tools. Your developers will already know how to use it, and will also be able to customize it with ease.
This is a tool for programmers and it works like many others. If you are in the development world already then you will be sailing in no time with Microsoft Visual Studio Code. It is also great for new developers and it is very easy to use and you can get all the tools you need in one place as you begin to learn.
It is an open source product, but VS Code is an open source project with the backing of one of the biggest software companies ever. The support pages and documentation are always helpful and even being a fairly new tool it has a strong community. There are frequent bug fixes and updates as well as a strong community plug in market.
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 Text. It is basically only an editor and it is built on javascript so there are file size and speed issues. Brackets remains around for me solely for how well it is suited for HTML. Visual Studio IDE is a beast. If you need the functionality of it, there are no other alternatives. But you are wasting time and money if you are doing the light front end work that the free and open VS Code is built for.
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is really designed and ideally suited for developers focused on client-side technologies and who want a solid cross-platform tool. For larger and more expansive projects, it is probably not the most ideal tool. Visual Studio Code fills a rapidly expanding niche in the web development world.

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