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The best thing to come out of Microsoft in years!
February 28, 2020

The best thing to come out of Microsoft in years!

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

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Here in the engineering org, all of frontend developers use VSCode to write their Javascript/HTML/CSS. But more than that, we also have about half of our backend developers using VSCode to write our...*drum roll* Scala code! What!? Yes, while VSCode and similar glorified text editors such as Sublime Text and Atom are traditionally relegated to being used by programmers for dynamically typed / interpreted languages, VSCode is so powerful and awesome even backend people such as me use it for writing Scala, which if you didn't know is perhaps the epitome of a typed and compiled language. VSCode makes writing code of all sorts much easier and doesn't get in your way.
  • Very active development with Microsoft backing. I don't see VSCode going away for a decade.
  • Very active community with all the plugins you need
  • For a electron app, VSCode's speed is stellar, almost comparable to ST3 which is natively built
  • Similar to all other electron apps, VSCode's memory and battery usage is pretty bad. Better plug in when you use it!
  • No git merging, which many people have come to expect as ST3 and Atom have the ability to do that
  • Default key shortcuts make no sense and I had to reconfigure almost all of them
  • Engineers spend less time fighting their editor
  • We get new engineers who want to use VSCode up to speed very quickly as configuration and plugins can be quickly copied from one machine to another
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 Vim user myself and I found just as comfortable in VSCode and even more productive.
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.

Do you think Microsoft Visual Studio Code delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft Visual Studio Code's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft Visual Studio Code live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft Visual Studio Code go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Microsoft Visual Studio Code again?

Yes

If you are already very comfortable and invested in one of VSCode's "competitors" such as Sublime Text or Atom, I suggest you just stay on that. They are still pretty good and VSCode isn't THAT much better to make the effort to switch. However, if you aren't tight with ST3 or Atom already and you use a dynamically typed language, then definitely hop on the train! VSCode is the future for all developers using JS, Python, etc.
What if you're backend? Do you love or hate all the heavy weight features of Eclipse or IntelliJ? If they are getting in your way, I suggest you switch to VSCode, which is way more lightweight and not overwhelming to use.