The best code editor available today!
April 13, 2021
The best code editor available today!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Software engineers in our organization use Visual Studio Code by their own choice, and usually to develop software as per their job requirements. Although, our engineering department makes available licenses for full-fledged IDEs like IntelliJ RubyMine for that purpose, many developers choose editors like Code because of its lightweight nature and extensibility.
- It is fast and snappy in most cases, unlike IDEs (IntelliJ, Eclipse etc.) that take quite a lot of time to start up and are sluggish even during use (including on high-end Macbook Pros).
- It provides great and top-notch support for a huge number of languages and web development frameworks. This support is either built-in or provided using first-party (Microsoft) or third-party extensions. E.g. Microsoft provides its own extension for Python, and Golang provides an official Visual Studio Code extension.
- Microsoft keeps continuously improving Code with new features and performance improvements.
- Unlike for most languages I have used, Ruby and Rails support available for Code users isn't great. The most popular Ruby extension is unofficial, and leaves much to desire. As an example, code navigation even with language server Solargraph installed isn't as good as IntelliJ's RubyMine.
- Even there is quite good support for a language or a framework, it is almost never as good as a dedicated IDE for it. In terms of the sheer number of features available, IntelliJ IDEs handily beat Code.
- Microsoft has close-sourced some of the extensions it develops for Code itself, e.g. Pylance for Python, and that has not been perceived as a good move for open-source.
- The fact that it provides decent support for Ruby, and great support for Python and front-end frameworks is crucial, as those technologies comprise our stack.
- Since it's free to use, it saves some money and also saves the headache of managing licenses.
- It performs decently even on low-end MacBook Airs (unlike IDEs).
- It has definitely had a positive impact as it provides a very convenient development experience for many developers at our organization, as they readily attest.
While Sublime Text, another free alternative, is faster and snappier than Code, the extensions that are available on it are sub-par (it doesn't even have an official extension store). This makes using it for any serious work unpleasant, at least to me.
IntelliJ's dedicated IDEs like RubyMine and PyCharm provide more features, but at the cost of sluggishness and money.
Visual Studio Code provides me the best development experience when compared to other offerings, as it strikes the right balance between features and speed/performance.
IntelliJ's dedicated IDEs like RubyMine and PyCharm provide more features, but at the cost of sluggishness and money.
Visual Studio Code provides me the best development experience when compared to other offerings, as it strikes the right balance between features and speed/performance.
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?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Microsoft Visual Studio Code go as expected?
I wasn't involved with the implementation phase
Would you buy Microsoft Visual Studio Code again?
Yes