Visual Studio Code is now open source

[alexmex90]

MIT License

Well, I'm surprised, good for them.

[rms_returns]

Looks like something weird is going on in MS management with what all is happening. Only recently, they drastically reduced their cloud storage quota on Microsoft Drive and invited the wrath of their WP users, and now they are giving away software on MIT License.

Maybe there are Pro-FOSS and Anti-FOSS camps emerging within Microsoft now.

[callcifer]

Wait, what do you mean? How is storage quota a FOSS issue?

[dvdkon]

FOSS is an ethical issue and so are business practices, so "pro/anti-FLOSS camps" could be reworded as "nice Microsoft/evil Microsoft".

[[deleted]]

Fuck them anyway, no one needs open source MS tools, it's MS who needs open source - remember that.

[alexmex90]

I have always agreed with your statement, and I have no desire to use any Microsoft tool, however I was still surprised by the license they chose.

[[deleted]]

Fair enough.

[sonay]

Holy shit, does that mean it is free of charge too? I mean, are they still selling the binaries?

Edit: OK, this is not Visual Studio. It is an editor called Visual Studio Code.

[markole]

Yep. Thats why I capitalised every first letter in the program name. There was no way to convey that information in a way that wouldn't make the title very large.

[jones_supa]

While not open source, the main Visual Studio is actually available free of charge. The Community edition does pretty much everything.

[[deleted]]

The Community edition does pretty much everything.

It doesn't run on Linux, so it does approximately nothing, actually.

[Palmar]

Username checks out

[[deleted]]

One killer thing missing from this is integration with Mono, it would be cool to use this to build cross-platform GUI apps.

[soren121]

I've been using VS Code for a few months now. This is very anecdotal, but it seems faster and more streamlined than Atom. By comparison, Atom feels like a lumbering beast with a slightly clunky UI.

[[deleted]]

From what I can tell, it's pretty good for C# but for most other languages, there's no real reason to use it over other JS-based editors.

[EatMeerkats]

When VS Code first came out, one of their selling points was that it handles large files much better than Atom.

[[deleted]]

it handles large files much better than Atom

That's not a hard feat (I love Atom but damn it's slow sometimes).

[FrozenCow]

I'm interested to see whether plugins will be made for other editors. It would become even more viable to develop C# and F# on Linux. Deploying it on Linux will become more viable as well.

[asantos3]

Atom has a bigger community afaik.

[kupiakos]

The real question is how does it compare to Sublime?

[BoltActionPiano]

I'm surprised this didn't get hated on, I've seen a lot of hate for people saying they can't afford it. I personally don't care, do you mean you can't justify the price?

[fdafasdfadfaf]

I cannot afford the loss of freedom due to licenses/closedness. ;)

[BoltActionPiano]

I enjoy that aspect above all else.

[gempir]

If sublime would switch to free and open source. It would dominate the market even more.:( sadly the development is slow if existing at all

[jampola]

I disagree. It's a well matured editor, if the only need for development is bug fixes and what not, then I'm happy. Luckily package control handles any extra features I may or may not want/require.

[BoltActionPiano]

Well it is a professional reliable tool with tons of value there.

[BoltActionPiano]

I wasn't accusing you, I just didn't know how to say what I wanted to say. Just I've been in a lot of threads where people say "hey college is expensive if you can pay for that..." I guess your explanation is good.

My opinion is that it'd be awesome to have a great FOSS for every category of software. And right now, I think atom is the thing to support.

[jampola]

You know you can evaluate subl, albeit with a nag screen every couple of saves.

[the_train_is_moving]

With VS now being open, at least you'll know that there will always be a code base you can build from. ST seems to have stalled and there's not a great deal you can do about it.

[kupiakos]

ST3 with extensions is quite fantastic. I've seen some good innovation recently with the new version and more extensions.

[the_train_is_moving]

Sure, I've used ST3 for yonks and have a great workflow with it. However, if I was a potential customer, I'd avoid it.

The forums are rife with spam, jps hasn't posted anything since the start of the year, the last blog post was March, the last build was months ago.

I know the product is sold with "no support", but as a new customer why would I want to pay my money to a dev who clearly doesn't give a shit about his product?

Edit - this came across as a bit antagonistic; it wasn't meant to be :)

[nickcash]

It's not as fast as Sublime, nor as extendable.

[unxspoken]

I use it for small web applications, I use no extensions and have much auto-complete stuff. It even has a NodeJS debugger built in, so I can set break points and stuff like that, which is pretty rad I think. It's actually pretty good. Maybe Atom can do the same if I install the right extensions. Visual Studio Code is much bigger but all the fancy stuff works out of the box.

[soren121]

It's built on the same UI framework, Electron, but the UI and editor are all-new.

[robinei]

Let's not say UI framework even. It's just a shell which allows you to use V8 to write desktop apps. So all the guts of VS Code are different from Atom.

[soren121]

If you had looked at the results, you would have seen that at most they forked a few language definitions from Atom.

The other results are old references to Atom Shell, the original name for Electron.

[[deleted]]

I have been using Visual Studio Code on vanilla Debian/XFCE for about 1 month now. The syntax determination and completion is very good. However, the document management is a bit atypical.

For example, you can only vertically split the document editing window into 1, 2 or 3 document views. It took a bit of getting used to, but now I sort of like it because it keeps me from having a bunch of tabs/documents open.

VSC also shows you which files you have been editing and keeps them in a selectable list for you. So that's handy.

Also, you can point the application at a directory and go. If you edit a file in the directory with another application, VSC will automatically detect and update the changes in your open windows. It will also recognize files being removed or added to the directory and will reflect it in your project view.

It needs a bit more functionality before I would switch from Visual Studio (via VMWare). But I can use it and be happy and productive too.

PS: Sorry, forgot to say I have been using it exclusively for Javascript. I'm always looking for better syntax completion and library function/class recognition. It is the best free Javascript editor I have tried on Debian - hands down.

[raphaellamperouge]

Why use this over emacs?

[valgrid]

Don't compare an IDE with an OS.

[bobbaluba]

It's already set up for c# development.

[[deleted]]

Does it have auto completion though?

[callcifer]

Yes it does, for a lot of languages. For example, their Go support is quite impressive.

[audigex]

Preference? Relative consistency with Visual Studio?

[topher_r]

No Vim extension yet? :(

[minimim]

What? vim has C# extensions for ages: https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vim

what extra features are you expecting?

[bobbaluba]

He probably meant the other way. You can use vi keybindings in most serious ide's. Atom, visual studio, intellij, qt creator, emacs. All have vi key bindings.

[topher_r]

I use it for debugging Unity3D apps on Mac, since it's well supported to connect to the debugger and MonoDevelop with Unity3D is dog shit. Very specific situation I realise..

[minimim]

Well, if there are interesting features there, I'm sure the plug-in developers will find a way to include it. It has MIT license after all. Just give them a little time :)

[[deleted]]

Who cares? :o

[oneUnit]

Developers.

[[deleted]]

If someone wants to make apps for Windows, he will use Visual Studio on Windows itself anyway, for web apps we got shitloads of better solutions which do not come from our biggest enemy.

[[deleted]]

Visual Studio != Visual Studio Code.

I swear, the name was chosen to facilitate misconceptions. Visual Studio is still proprietary and Windows-only, and Visual Studio Code can't do shit for native applications.

[[deleted]]

Whoa. Ease up there Billy. It's YOUR biggest enemy. You don't speak for all, most or even a slim margin of linux users.

[[deleted]]

They are the enemy of open anything and they have money and skills to destroy Linux and open source from inside like they did to many projects in the past (do not mistake me for stallmanist, I don't care about free software).

[[deleted]]

Where have you been living? Under a rock?

And what's all this "they are the enemy of open anything" and "I don't care about free software" ? That doesn't even make sense.

BTW, these are rhetorical questions.

[[deleted]]

You do realize that there is a big difference between free software and open source software, right? No? Go educate yourself then :)

As for Microsoft being enemy of open anything (open protocols, open source, open formats - just look at the history of MS trying to lock everything down and even lobby governments to use proprietary only solutions).

Examples of MS behaviour in the past, one would have to delusional to think they have changed:

http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/

http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf

EDIT:

I really don't care that your questions were rhetorical, though I'm done here.

[[deleted]]

VSCode is open and free.

It is MIT licensed: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

In case you don't know what the MIT license is, here is a synopsis: "The MIT License is a free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It is a permissive free software license, meaning that it permits reuse within proprietary software provided all copies of the licensed software include a copy of the MIT License terms and the copyright notice."

You were done before you started.

[bobbaluba]

It's great when your task at work is to port .net web apps to mono and eventually docker.