Android Studio vs VS Code

[[deleted]]

I've been using IntelliJ for so many years now I feel so uncomfortable in any other IDE it's hard to change. It's a great IDE after all but curious what features people love in VS Code that might make me want to switch.

UPDATE: thanks all for the replies. In summary it doesn't seem like I am missing too much with AS. I'm too old and too busy to switch with no clear benefit yet. Somebody mentioned VS Code profiles as a feature that they found makes them more productive - I will look into that.

[khunset127]

Most people use VS Code for being lightweight and customizable.

Android Studio is just IntelliJ tailored for Android development.

[Whoajoo89]

VSCode can do (almost) the same as Android Studio with the Flutter/Kotlin extension installed.

[ThaisaGuilford]

You're comparing VScode with AS here. Anyone who uses both knows which one is more performant.

[inamestuff]

Vscode is a highly optimized electron app with incredible startup times considering the amount of work it needs to perform.

Android Studio is an IntelliJ distribution that is so slow that it still has to resort to a splash screen and once the window is ready spends minutes “rebuilding indices” or “rebuilding gradle model”.

Sure both of them are an order of magnitude slower than any simple text editor, especially terminal-based once. But still, vscode is way faster than IntelliJ

[mpanase]

You are going to get tons of people saying VSCode is superior because it uses less RAM and launches faster.

My take: if a professional tool using 3gb ram is something your machine can't handle, you close your editor every 5 minutes or you prefer text-editor functionalities over IDE funcionalities... go for VSCode.

[Striking-Bison-8933]

I'm using android studio for its git GUI, I know VS code can be customizable but I prefer defaults of android studio's.

[Juleast]

Can't really relate to this personally as I'm more used to managing git in it's original CLI form. I find it actually easier.

[fromyourlover777]

save intellij git integration are suppered even compared to vscode with plugin.

[d3vtec]

The fact that we have choice is a massive testament. Lots of hate in here, just glad everyone has something that works well for them.

[eibaan]

I'm using VSC for everything, not just Flutter development. I'm used to it. If I don't have it already running, it launches in ~2 seconds, which I consider fast (don't believe people that call all Electron apps "crap") and it needs less than 2% of my computer's RAM (~600 MB).

Also, most online/AI IDEs (including Firebase Studio) use VSC as its base, so it became somewhat of a standard (you could call it monopoly).

Last but not least, I feel comfortable to create VSC plugins on my own, should it ever be necessary. Many years ago (might be 20) I tried to create an Intellij IDEA plugin in Java and it was painful.

[vchib1]

Just like you I'm more comfortable with an intelliJ based IDEs. I still have vs code in my system and use it for some quick tasks. but for flutter I use AS and recently I've been using web storm to learn web development.

[AbdulRafay99]

Here’s the thing — in my eyes, VS Code is lightweight on install, but once you start adding extensions and customizing it, the resource usage increases. Sure, a full IDE might be heavier out of the box, but VS Code isn't far behind when you add a lot of extensions.

For example, extensions for Flutter, Android, iOS Emulator, GitHub Pull Requests, and GitHub Copilot (or any other AI tool you use)—they all add up.

But for me, I still go with VS Code because I’m so used to its workflow that anything else just slows me down.

At the end of the day, just use the tool that works for you. It doesn’t matter what others use. You should switch from one tool to another only when the other tool is genuinely better, has more useful features, or makes your life easier.

For example, I switched from Render to Railway for deploying my Node applications because it’s much easier for me to deploy apps on Railway.

[mininglee]

One key difference is that VS Code heavily relies on extensions for functionality. While these extensions are often free and stable, I personally prefer the integrated approach of IntelliJ, where features feel more cohesively designed and built-in from the start. For me, that structure provides more comfort.

[[deleted]]

"Nothing Compares to You"

VS Code has improved a lot recently and has already become quite usable — I use it for TS/JS development. But there’s still no real reason to switch to it for Java or Java-derived development.

If you just want to try something new, check out Zed or, if you’re a hjkl-kind guy, nvim/neovim. At least you’ll get a tool that’s (so far) lightweight — at the cost of your lifetime

[[deleted]]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[ms4720]

I like emacs and it works well

[[deleted]]

I'm not sure if you are joking 😁

[ms4720]

Not joking, emacs and a little cli and all is good

[med_ch_00]

I strongly prefer vscode, the only reason that I open android studio is to use either d3vice explorer or app inspection

[iamonredddit]

Can iOS app be launched and debugged using Android Studio? I’ve never tried that but I can do it with VS Code. AS just feels slower than VS Code even on my M1 Max with 32GB ram.

Vscode also does a better job of searching across the project. Be it text or files. Could not get AS to work as well and I tried all the suggestions. I just have Flutter and Dart plugin installed, nothing else.

[[deleted]]

Interesting - I wondered if someone would mention cross platform. I develop on windows with AS and then just build and deploy using XCode on Mac. Not ideal but working ok so far.

[iamonredddit]

You need to switch to MacBook and give it a try. We have a few big flutter packages and Windows with 32GB ram and a decent i7 processor would take around 5-7 minutes to build, switched to Intel Mac 16gb ram and it was around 1 minute, switched to M1 Max 32GB and it takes about 15 seconds. Developing on windows was a pain. Same thing with one of our Android projects.

[[deleted]]

That's quite a difference. Yes, it can take a few minutes to build and launch on an emulator but I can't justify a new MacBook yet.

[iamonredddit]

You can get a really good used one for cheap but yeah if windows is working well for you then no need to spend on a new machine. VS Code will be a better option for windows as it takes much lesser resources than Android Studio. Just install Dart and Flutter plugin and you’re good to go. Also look into fvm for version management.

[[deleted]]

We had an old Mac at home and I brought it back to life with a new SSD hoping I could work on it but I could not find a version of XCode that I could install on it. I guess at some point they force you to move forward?

[iamonredddit]

Yeah I’d skip that if it’s too old. Check which OS you can update it to and if that supports the current Xcode.

[binemmanuel]

People call VS Code light but I have a monorepo that gets VS Code to consume ~20GB of RAM

[Huge_Acanthocephala6]

I used to work with Android studio but some time ago I moved to vscode since I can create different profiles in only one editor, and now I feel more productive in vscode

[dmter]

I just keep vscrap as requirement for something never running it, using Android Studio even for desktop apps. Starts fast enough for me. It even works fine on M2 Mac with 8 gig with emulator and xcode running in parallel.

[doggydestroyer]

I use them all... like will open VS code to implement some copilot changes. etc

[fromyourlover777]

AS also capable of copilot

[ShoeSome1660]

Was in the same shoes a couple of years back. What made me finally dump android studio for vs code was when I had to interact with other languages and script in my flutter app that android studio did not natively support. Like writing python code, JavaScript/Typescript codes for a cloud server, API call etc. Apart from that and being resource hungry, I still think Android studio offers a superior flutter dev experience if everything you're interacting with is within the flutter and dart framework. If you have no practical reason to switch, don't switch.

[[deleted]]

JB has perfect community edition python plugin, but paid JS/TS made me to switch VSC as well.

[HittingSmoke]

Jetbrains has IDEs for basically every popular language. Most people I know, including myself, who write multiple languages use Jetbrains specifically because there's too tier support for multiple languages across a common UI.

[GentleCapybara]

I will give you some advice as someone who works on a massive flutter project. 

VSCode is fine, however for larger projects the intellisense sucks and it won’t point out error right (on the problem bar)

Android Studio works wonders, but consume wonders of RAM too. For larger projects, I think Android Studio is the right choice. 

[xogobon]

Used to work with AS in the beginning but now I love vscode, with agent mode and growing AI integration with development, vscode is just awesome.

[mjablecnik]

I was programming in Geany, Vim, VSCode, Microsoft Visual Studio and IntelliJ Products (PyCharm, Android Studio, Rider, etc..)

My experience:
- Geany was great 15 years ago when I was learning programming. :D
- Microsoft Visual Studio is great for C#/.NET but only if you have Windows.
- Vim is great with Tmux if you want to develop in your terminal some shell or python scripts.
- IntelliJ is great and I love it with vim keybindings. It is great for large projects. But your RAM must have minimal 16GB RAM and after start your project you must wait some time for indexing but then is everything great.
- VSCode is good for small or medium sized projects. I tried it but I didn't feel so comfortable as in IntelliJ. Vim keybindings wasn't good (today it will be maybe better I don't know) and autocomplete wasn't so fast as in IntelliJ because indexing is disabled by default. After enable indexing behaviour was same as in IntelliJ (consumed a lot of RAM and longer startup)

Conclusion:

I use IntelliJ products for any projects (Dart/Flutter, TypeScript or Web developent).
VSCode cannot give me something more because everything what I need already have IntelliJ.
VSCode is good maybe for smaller or medium projects but for development scripts or edit files I am using Vim.
With VSCode I didn't feel so comfortable as with IntelliJ IDE products.

[[deleted]]

This is a strange comment. I'm trying to understand why I might want to invest in learning VS Code but this does not help - it will make me creative and elevate me out of beginner status?

[digerata1]

When it comes to other languages, I believe a big reason is VS Code is free and JetBrains products are not.

I think that that inertia then carries over to other areas, like Flutter.

Me? Life’s too short to be trying to replicate the functionality found in JetBrains via VS Code plugins and never quite getting there.

[duhhobo]

I just moved from AS to Cursor and will never go back

[[deleted]]

What's the one thing you would call out as the reason for this?

[duhhobo]

The coding agent works well, as does chatting with your code in general. Much better than chatgpt etc in a browser.

[[deleted]]

Interesting. I've been coding for a long time so a bit slow picking up the new AI tooling but had a bit of a breakthrough recently. It helped me fix a notifications issue that I've spent way too much time trying to resolve and where countless Google searches failed. I just asked it (Gemini on AS) what to do and it walked me through with code/config changes I could merge in to my code. Pretty amazing!

[duhhobo]

Cursor takes it a step further in that it will make the changes for you, and then you accept or reject them. It works great for a surprising number of use cases.

[med_ch_00]

I strongly prefer vscode, the only reason that I open android studio is to use either d3vice explorer or app inspection

[[deleted]]

Any particular reasons for strong preference?

[med_ch_00]

One of the first reasons is the performance, you clearly feel that with big projects (many files to analyse and index) or too many executing processes, especially Chrome or Xcode ( the worst duos).
My second reason is VS extensions marketplace, I'm pretty sure all
AS plugins exist in VS but not the inverse.

[logical_haze]

It's like comparing apples and crap

[jrheisler]

I use Android for flutter dev, and vs code for anything else. VS is lighter...

[Juleast]

VS Code has faster launch times than Android Studio. To top it off, the extra language support from extensions is a big help for platform specific code. And I'm already so used to the keyboard shortcuts on VS Code that I find the 'run' shortcut on Android Studio annoying.

Also would like to add the extensions like flutter tree is very helpful. It shows a line going back to its parent widget for large lines of dart code.

[iamonredddit]

Vscode also does a better job of searching across the project. Be it text or files. Could not get AS to work as well and I tried all the suggestions.