Where’s the code that doesn’t quote this properly? I’m guessing it’s Bash.

They’re saying it’s a code editor and an IDE.

lol it doesn’t have testing or debugging by default!

So the fact that they’ve designed it with an extensible architecture somehow makes it not an IDE? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

I guess Eclipse isn’t an IDE either then?

They didn’t have that originally

They added it within 4 months of launch.

they added it because of people like you that are arguing that it’s an IDE when it clearly isn’t.

They added text saying it is an IDE because they didn’t want people to think it is an IDE? I think you’ve misunderstood.

It’s a text editor with code highlighting, fast search, and an understanding of different languages…

And integrated debugging, testing, refactoring, … Why exactly do you think it is not an IDE?

Yes I’d say so.

MS even clarified that it’s not an IDE

Microsoft doesn’t get to define what an IDE is. Also… I actually reread what they said and the implicitly say it is an IDE (and a “code editor” which is a fairly meaningless term):

Visual Studio Code is a streamlined code editor with support for development operations like debugging, task running, and version control. It aims to provide just the tools a developer needs for a quick code-build-debug cycle and leaves more complex workflows to fuller featured IDEs, such as Visual Studio IDE.

“to fuller featured IDEs”, not “to IDEs”.

In that case I would recommend using an IDE that supports C well. On Windows Visual Studio will get you far and it is the easiest to set up with wizards to create projects etc.

Alternatively you could use VSCode but it’s a bit harder to set up.

1. Install VSCode
2. Install the clangd extension from the marketplace. It’s better than the official Microsoft C++ one.
3. Also install the CMake extension.
4. Create a CMake project by hand (you need CMakelists.txt and main.c). In the CMake make sure you add

set(CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS TRUE)

That will give you perfect code intelligence (error squiggles etc).

Yes in some ways it is not a beginner friendly IDE. I would also point to launch.json as being a right arse.

Still an IDE though.

There isn’t a hard line. IDE means Integrated Development Environment. It just means that tools that - in the stone ages - were used separately are integrated into your editor. Common tools that IDEs integrate that would be separate tools with a text editor like Notepad:

• Debuggers
• Code intelligence (auto-complete, refactoring, go-to-definition, find-references, etc.)
• Compile/run/debug shortcuts
• Test running and displaying results
• Version control

VSCode has all of those. The fact that it implements them in a pluggable way doesn’t mean it doesn’t.

Even though “is it an IDE” is a blurry line, VSCode is very clearly far across that line.

The only reasons people say it isn’t are a) as a put-down - it’s not a real IDE like <my favourite alternative> - or b) because Microsoft put some nonsense about it not being an IDE on their website in order to try and explain why they make two IDEs (VSCode and VS).

What language are you using?

VSCode is absolutely an IDE. It is full of IDE features. The idea that it isn’t an IDE is one of those weird memes that won’t die, like people saying “an historic occasion”.

Very nice! This is definitely an annoying problem.

I’m not trusting this to Python though.

It’s pretty easy to not notice what community you’re in. I’m subscribed to this because I use Linux and am interested in it, but like JokeDeity I am not under the illusion that many people here are that it is really a viable alternative to Windows for anyone but a small minority for whom fixing bugs is a hobby.

I want my audio to work and my laptop to get more than 2 hours battery life and not hard reboot when it runs out of RAM.

On that last point my most recent attempt to work around the issue was by massively increasing swap. I am a professional programmer with 30 years experience. I’ve been using Linux for 25 years. Increasing swap space was difficult for me.

On Windows it’s a slider in a GUI. Just… stop pretending that Linux is on the same level, please.

ARM is very very obviously superior to x86. You won’t be able to find anyone informed that will say otherwise.

Probably the biggest way it is better is that instructions are always 2 or 4 bytes which makes wide decoders a lot easier.

I wonder what criteria he has for considering Rust to be a success. Everyone stops writing C++ overnight? Obviously stupid.

Rust is a massive success. This guy is just impatient. Rust is better than C++ in the same way ARM is better than x86. Intel is still alive but would you invest?

I am a professional programmer and a user of AI.

With current AI, it’s going to have absolutely no effect on “creativity of new programmers”. I would say it would even help with that since it greatly lowers the barrier to entry for programming. One of the things it is actually quite good at is explaining basic concepts, which can often be hard to google.

The thing it isn’t good at - yet - is writing complete programs. Especially if they aren’t very common domains like CRUD or parsers. So you still need to know how to program.

At the moment it’s kind of like you’ve got a friend who has read a ton of stuff but isn’t very clever or reliable. Amazing for finding things, looking things up, doing grunt auto-complete work, etc. But you can’t ask them to write an SPI driver for a radio module or whatever.

Maybe in future they’ll get to the point where they can reliably do the kinds of complex tasks that most professional programmers do, but I think that will take a while (and probably be close to AGI by that point).

He obviously hasn’t. This is one of those things where some people feel threatened by something, haven’t used it, and feel like they can comment based on how they imagine it is.

Reminds me of when the iPhone came out. You had all sorts of nonsense criticism of it from people that had clearly never even touched one.

There is no such thing as “no-brainer commercially” when Ai is involved

There absolutely is. Copilot is $100/year (or something like that). Developer salaries are like $100k/year (depending on location). So it only has to improve productivity by 0.1% to be worthwhile. It easily does that.

You can’t “turn off your brain” when using copilot. It isn’t that advanced yet.

Terrible article. 90% fluffy rant. 10% actual points.

Obviously GitHub is biased here, but anyone that has actually used Copilot knows it is useful. It’s not going to write your whole program for you but it clearly improves productivity by a small amount (which makes it a no-brainer commercially).

For some reason the author clearly needs Copilot to be useless. I’m not sure why.

Are they going to rewrite Back Orifice in Rust? :-D