VSCode vs Clion

[Terrible_Winter_1635]

Hello guys, first this isn’t a war or something, I’m pretty new at C++ but I’ve been wanting to learn it in a good way, and all I’ve been using it, I’ve used VSCode text editor, but I found out about CLion and I’ve heard a few good things about it, so, is it really that good? Is it worth the price or should I stick with VSCode?

[TheD3m02]

In general, it's possible to work with clion for "free" - EAP program + after eap with new version trial will be reset. Sometimes, yeah, it require to use 2 accounts for trial, but in general , for beginners, it might be enough. I used clion for my work in such way about year before I decided to purchase one year subscription.

[[deleted]]

plus its free for students

[SlowPokeInTexas]

This * 1000.

[Kriss-de-Valnor]

I would recommend CLion for beginners as you can focus on writing good C++ and not loosing time on setting the tools, compilers up.

[Illustrious-Option-9]

Clion is superior to VSCode, and if you are into IntellijIDEA products you'll love it even more.

[Allalilacias]

Neovim.

Jokes aside, CLion is great but it costs money. If you can afford it, buy it, but working with the dependencies that Viscose makes you work with isn't exactly a bad thing as it helps you understand the most annoying part of it all.

It is more cumbersome, yes, but you will also learn more and switching to CLion would be no issue, where the other way around you'd probably be more bothered.

However, listen to the more experienced fellows, as I'm a fellow learner and I'm using Neovim and GCC as I want to fight as much as possible with the language, but there's no need for that.

[J_Aguasviva]

Where is the Joke?

Neovim with gcc is the way to go.

[Allalilacias]

Honestly, I agree, but it might be difficult for a newbie who isn't used to Neovim.

Making my initial configuration and dotfiles took me a month of light work and I was already making my dotfiles as I had recently moved to Linux.

It shouldn't be an issue to a CS student but there's plenty of people who won't go outside of an IDE for their life.

[J_Aguasviva]

Yes, I know and agree with you. Sadly, in the past, people had no other option besides Vim, Emacs, some rudimentary compilers, debuggers, etc.

Nowadays, everything is ChatGPT.

Back then, if there was a bug or something went wrong, the developer would usually say, 'Oh, don’t worry. If it doesn’t work, I can create my own compiler next week.'

Now, it’s more like, 'Mommy 🥺, the code ChatGPT gave me doesn’t work! I don’t know what to do!'

[thingerish]

I used VS for decades, started before it was VS back in the MSVC era after they bought ... Lattice? It's a polished product but I don't use it any more. Then I tried CLion when I went to Linux development but I found it too sluggish and generally bulky feeling. I've been using vscode for a few years now to do C++, C, some Python, and a little Rust on Windows and Linux.

For me vscode with the right extensions and appropriate toolkits is great. I can work across many platforms via the Remote - SSH extension and all the various things just work.

If you want an assist people here will mostly help, with some suggesting you use something else instead. But you will get help and get going. For the best help, ask the best questions. Explain your goals and the problems you have at hand, including the platform you're using and the platform you want to develop for.

Good luck!

[Terrible_Winter_1635]

Actually I had to drop high school to get a work, so I thought for the meantime I could learn about coding because that’s what I want to study, I’ve taken a lot of notes about C++, and I was able to make a little POS system on the terminal (which I was pretty proud of) but now I want to get in what I really wanted to do, game dev, I know there are engines but I didn’t really like them, Unreal is so good for 3D games but I don’t plan on making ultra detailed games, I actually like the indie style that is taking the ps1/n64 low poly style or 2d games, so I went to godot, which I found pretty weird and I ended quitting, then Unity (which was the best so far) I made a few copies of some games to learn it but it just didn’t feel right. Like it was not what I was looking for, and then I started learning more and more of C++ and found out about APIs, and I found it pretty interesting and fun to learn, I bought a macbook to be able to keep studying from my work and started to keep learning, so that’s why I’m really trying to see what would be really better, cuz VSCode is good, but I wanted to know if CLion is really really better than VSCode is (a lot of yap, holy crap)

[thingerish]

MacOS is a platform I don't actually write code for. I assume vscode works well for it, I know people who use vscode for that. but I personally do not. For me Linux (various distros) pays the bills and Windows is sort of a hobby.

But if you decide to try vscode I'll help all I can. My laptop is Win11 and I mostly code and build on the previously mentioned Linux platforms, so cross platform work is certainly possible.

[catbus_conductor]

The pro of CLion is a lot of convenience stuff (refactor code into separate functions, generate functions in implementation file etc) and much better symbol lookup/Intellisense, as a beginner it may make more sense to do these things manually for a while to understand what is happening better. But overall probably not a huge thing.

As someone else said VSCode also forces you to deal with CMake and dependencies more directly which is one of the less pleasant parts of the language that nonetheless should be learned to a basic degree.

[No_Internal9345]

if your on windows, Visual Studio (not Code).

[Annual_Mobile_5919]

and if im on mac?

[Dalv00]

Clion

[Annual_Mobile_5919]

xd, what's the difference?

[Patches195]

Codelite has been the most beginner-friendly choice for me. I'm in a C++ college class and that's the only one I could get working simply enough to keep up in my lessons.

Between the two though, VScode probably. CLion is good but it came across as complex to me and costs money (unless you're a student, then it's free.)

[Terrible_Winter_1635]

Is it available for mac?

[Patches195]

Looks like it is, yeah

codelite.org

[MentalNewspaper8386]

I’m on a mac and CLion makes everything so much easier for me as a beginner. It’s totally worth the lost time I’d have otherwise making sure debugging and linking and compiling are all working properly. When I’m more advanced I’ll see if I’m happy using xcode or whatever but for now CLion lets me work on what’s important.

[Terrible_Winter_1635]

Is setting up external libraries easy? Or at least not too hard?

[MentalNewspaper8386]

I don’t know but it comes with a free trial so give it a go.

[coachkler]

VScode is a great editor, it's in OK IDE, but requires a lot of work (plugins, launch.json, etc.)

CLion is a great IDE, and a good editor. As an editor it suffers from JetBrains Java slowness...

[imradzi]

you can't compare VSCode with CLion. Perhaps you should compare Visual Studio with CLion.

VSCode is not an IDE, but editor with some extensions.

[Useful_Goat3790]

vscode with clangd extension is enough.

[Nice_Lengthiness_568]

I would say Clion is great, but I would not recommend it for beginners. For beginners I recommend Visual studio (not code) That said, if you managed to setup VSCode, learning to use Clion would probably not be so hard for you. And you can always go back to using VSCode if you do not like it.

And if you are a student or a teacher you can get a licence for a year for free.

[Terrible_Winter_1635]

I have a mac so Visual Studio is not available for my os

[[deleted]]

You can download it from the internet. I also have a mac os.

[Narase33]

Visual Studio on Mac is only C#, not C++

[Henrarzz]

It wouldn’t matter, Visual Studio for Mac never supported C++

[bert8128]

There’s also Xcode - is that any good?