from Hacker News

Visual Studio Code 1.9

by jrwiegand on 2/2/17, 6:23 PM with 293 comments

  • by AsyncAwait on 2/2/17, 7:12 PM

    I am surprised at the amount of semi-negative comments here. Yes, some features are yet to be implemented, (it's still a fairly young project and you can always follow GitHub issues on progress), but for an Electron app, it's surprisingly fast and capable.

    The Microsoft-developed Go plugin makes it the best Go IDE out there, the devs, (Ramya Rao etc.) are super responsive and really trying to resolve issues quickly.

    If you haven't tried it yet, I think you really should and if you have found a problem, open an issue at https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode so the devs know about it, complaining doesn't help making it better. They generally release every month, so it will get fixed sooner rather than later.

    P.S. Kudos to the team & contributors for another awesome release!

  • by christophilus on 2/2/17, 7:03 PM

    VSCode really does improve with each release, and the monthly cycle is just about the perfect pace. This is a great example of how to run an OSS project.

    I wonder how much Microsoft spends on it each month, and what value they see in it? Is it just a marketing expense? e.g. They fund VSCode in order to gain the good will of developers which they hope will turn into Azure or maybe Windows sales in the future?

  • by reynoldsbd on 2/2/17, 6:48 PM

    Another great release!

    Maybe I'm just squarely within the target audience of VSCode, but I'm consistently impressed by how many of my pain points just magically go away with each new iteration.

  • by wattt on 2/3/17, 1:17 AM

    I have used vim for years and I was tasked with making an Electron app for a client so I tried vscode... And I love it! I still use vim for sysadmin things but it has been the first thing Microsoft has made since the original Natural Keyboard that I absolutely love. It is good. I recommend it to others. I hate bloated editors and it is good... No config/setup process either - the defaults are enough!
  • by yokohummer7 on 2/2/17, 7:08 PM

    This is an off topic, but I just learned from the article that PowerShell will soon be the default in place of cmd.exe in Windows 10. I welcome this change as I found the experience of using PS was superior to that of bash/zsh in general cases.

    But I hope they figured out the performance problem. As of writing, in the stable version of Windows 10, PS is perceptually slower than cmd, so I was forced to use PS only when needed. Funnily it was even slower in Windows 8, so the current affair is better than ever. But to be truly a default I think the performance of PS should at least match that of cmd.exe.

  • by eob on 2/2/17, 8:37 PM

    VSCode + TypeScript is the perfect foot-in-door for MS to get into the web space.

    They're both excellent products by themselves, but also give Microsoft the platform to start dangling turnkey Azure integration in front of developers.

    Imagine if the IDE started to offer the ability to configure, deploy, and manage targeted production stacks--no browser / command line hackery required. That would be compelling.

  • by santaclaus on 2/2/17, 6:45 PM

    VS Code's release notes are really nicely done - I don't usually comment on documentation but whoever wrote these did a bang up job!
  • by jinmingjian on 2/3/17, 12:17 AM

    Kudos!

    VSC is an "redefined" and high hackable (largely thanks to the rich nodejs ecosystem) editing environment which you can do everything as you like. So, to pin it into an editor or an IDE makes less sense.

    more technical imagination: the project lead Erich Gamma has long history works in the field of Eclipse and definitely knows the importance (and pain) of the code editing to a programmer. Then, I (and we) can expect VSC would go beyond the Eclipse and hunt the heart of coders from other IDE products some day:)

    final shameless insert: recently I release an extension to provide Swift editing environment[1] to try to bring Go/Rust like experiment for Swift server side development. Now it works for both Linux and macOS.(I hope to investigate the possibility for windows 10 WSL after release 2.0 coming soon.)

    [1] https://github.com/jinmingjian/sde

  • by nojvek on 2/3/17, 1:32 AM

    I worked on the debug inline values feature. Let me know if you have any feedback/questions regarding that. Its currently disabled for evaluation purposes but you can enable in settings via "debug.inlineValues": true

    http://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_9#_inline-variable-v...

  • by blunte on 2/3/17, 9:17 AM

    I am super pleased that VS Code exists, works on multiple platforms, and is apparently a first class project at MS Dev. Like some other devs, I ran as far from Microsoft as I could many years ago... but now it seems they are trying to be more open, or less protectionist/monopolistic.

    I used VS Code (starting at v1.5) for a couple of projects (on my Mac), and I found it quite effective and very performant. The performance, particularly the interface latency, is a big complaint I have with other "fat" IDEs. And while my hands still try to do some Vi commands and a lot of Emacs commands, I found the keyboard options for VS Code acceptable.

    This is as close to a Thank You to Microsoft that I have uttered in a long time. I hope they keep up the good work.

  • by joekrill on 2/2/17, 7:18 PM

    I keep trying VSCode, but the main thing that keeps me going back to Atom is the fact that I have to do everything at the command line or by editing an enormous json file. Maybe I'm spoiled, but I'd much rather have a nice UI to deal with settings than have to figure out that, say, in order to show line numbers I have to modify "editor.lineNumbers" and set it to "on" (or is it "true"? or 1? I can't remember... let me go waste more time looking it up...)
  • by joaodlf on 2/2/17, 7:19 PM

    I use vs code for Go development and it's pretty amazing. Slowly starting to use it in other languages as well, but the Go support is really 5*.
  • by pwthornton on 2/2/17, 6:36 PM

    I have a new project at work that I decided to use it for to see how I liked using VS Code.

    For the most part, I like it, but it's lack of Mac-nativeness bugs me, and it may bug me enough to switch. Double clicking the window bar in all natives app minimizes them to the dock for me. In Visual Studio, it maximizes my window (but not into full screen mode). I keep clicking the menu bar to minimize a window, and this keeps happening. It's kind of maddening.

  • by sunnyps on 2/3/17, 6:29 AM

    I work on Chromium and I test every VS Code version to see how it performs with the Chromium source code (except third_party). This is the first time I'm impressed. My observations:

    1. Go to file is a little bit slower than Sublime Text but the extra features in VS Code make that tradeoff worthwhile. 2. The C/C++ extension enables go to definition/header without any extra configuration. 3. I like that it runs on top of Electron which is after all a fork of Chromium. 4. I haven't tried the debugger yet but I'm hopeful that will work fine too.

    I'll keep playing around with it and maybe even switch from Sublime Text.

  • by vikingcaffiene on 2/3/17, 12:18 AM

    I was a die hard ST3 user and Microsoft hater and I begrudgingly gave VS Code a shot after a dev I respected gave it a shout out on twitter. After a day of heavy use it became my daily driver. It is a great balance of speed, configurability, and features. Very impressed and highly recommend giving it a shot. Its just getting better and better.
  • by vgy7ujm on 2/2/17, 8:04 PM

    It's nicer than Atom and almost feels as snappy as Sublime. But Vim still is miles better when you have put in the work to become proficient. MacVim works great for retina screens and high color support.
  • by grandalf on 2/2/17, 7:16 PM

    As an emacs user, it's interesting to watch the race of open source extensible editors like Atom and VSCode.

    I still haven't been tempted to leave emacs, but it's great to see so much progress in the ecosystem.

  • by candiodari on 2/3/17, 12:51 AM

    Given that this runs on electron, which is basically a web browser with a node backend, is it possible to run this either as a webserver or otherwise remotely ?

    I'd like to run this with the webserver running on a big dev machine at work and the client at work. X forwarding is not working well for me at least.

  • by mootothemax on 2/2/17, 6:47 PM

    Anyone know if the C# plugin supports cshtml files yet? The lack of autocomplete, inspections and so on really hampers web development with it.

    I've now switched entirely to using Rider because of this. While it's still early days for Rider (and it makes my Laptop's fans spin nonstop), being able to hastily edit my views makes it more than worth it.

    (And integrated ReSharper is always good!)

  • by yokohummer7 on 2/2/17, 6:52 PM

    The slowness shown in the pre-1.9 terminal is a bit ridiculous. Was it really the case? I've never seen such a strangely-behaving emulator! Really good that they resolved the issue.
  • by sdoering on 2/3/17, 8:20 AM

    Ohhhh I love the new 'Synchonized Markdown" feature. This will in the end replace the need for iA writer (that I happily paid for) on my machine. As I do have a workflow already setup to (Semi-)automate creation of files from .md I now can do this inside VSC and do not need to open another application.
  • by xmatos on 2/2/17, 7:06 PM

    Am I the only one who misses an apt repository?
  • by btbuilder on 2/3/17, 1:38 AM

    Alternatively I have been using IntelliJ with the Go plugin for about a year and now the Gogland EAP.

    It has some really cool features like VCS integration, "TODO" panel and "goto" functionality that works through interfaces. You can "Goto Super Method" to jump to the definition of an interface function that the highlighted function implements. You can also do the reverse which is to list all the structs that implement an interface, or a specific interface function.

  • by yAnonymous on 2/3/17, 10:25 AM

    I'm critical of Microsoft and everything related to it, but I'm impressed with the whole VS Code project.

    The team makes very sane development decisions. Code offers a great UI, is fast and configurable. Bugs and issues are handled quickly and despite already having overtaken all other editors IMHO, there's a constant stream of improvements that are documented nicely with every update.

    Good job.

  • by rdslw on 2/2/17, 6:50 PM

    Their Workbench related changes in this release are great. Pay attention to redone (also faster!!) terminal support.

    https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_9#_workbench

  • by manishsharan on 2/2/17, 8:00 PM

    I feel so guilty using this because I did not renew my license for Webstorm. I used to love webstorm but the javascript development environment/ecosystem has come such a long way since when I first purchased Webstorm.
  • by alexdoma on 2/3/17, 11:47 AM

    This version introduced a non-trivial bug for me; When I open a file to edit through nautilus, it opens in a new window instead of reusing the existing one.

    The new settings (window.openFilesInNewWindow and window.openFoldersInNewWindow) don't help no matter what when I set them to 'off'

    EDIT: Fixed it on Ubuntu by removing the '--new-window-if-not-first' argument from the code.desktop related command.

        sudo nano /usr/share/applications/code.desktop
        # set: Exec=/usr/share/code/code %U
  • by Keyframe on 2/2/17, 6:42 PM

    Anyone knows if there's something like Goya for Vim for VSCode? I know there's full screen and zen modes, but I miss margins so that when I'm full screen I can have everything centred on monitor.
  • by jszymborski on 2/2/17, 11:03 PM

    I've been gradually finding myself using vscode over atom more and more, but the thing I consistently miss are Sublime-like shortcuts like Ctrl+D to duplicate a line or Ctrl+Click to add a cursor.
  • by lukasm on 2/2/17, 11:24 PM

    How to do search within search? E.g. I look in my src/ for json, but I get 50 results. In Sublime the result is a file so I can cmd+F it. Not sure how to do it here though.
  • by arwhatever on 2/3/17, 6:59 AM

    Might be interesting to see a case study from this team, their engineering practices, etc. They seem to be remarkably productive and successful and to iterate quickly.
  • by thiht on 2/2/17, 7:28 PM

    Great release and awesome release notes, as always. Many thanks to the team for such a great editor!

    I'm especially thrilled by the integrated terminal improvements.

  • by moogly on 2/2/17, 9:10 PM

    I really like VS Code, and try to use it as much as possible, but I can't make it my main driver until they've added more detailed theming support. Textmate themes aren't good enough. I can't get used to such basic highlighting that doesn't even come close to ReSharper's with "Color identifiers" enabled.
  • by ParkerK on 2/2/17, 6:55 PM

    Man, I'd really like if they'd just add a default hotkey for 'Open Folder'. I know you can custom map hotkeys, but for an editor that's supposed to be 'easy to use out of the box', it's still lacking some basic features.

    That being said, it's nice that they're improving it still

  • by 13years on 2/2/17, 8:02 PM

    I am really loving VS Code. However, there are 2 big things I really need to give up Brackets/WebStorm entirely.

    1) Jump to definition for plain JS. Both Brackets and WebStorm can find method definitions for any JS project.

    2) Multiline searches. I use this quite a lot to find files that contain 2 terms on different lines.

  • by therealmarv on 2/2/17, 9:05 PM

    Does anybody know a way to have better window management in VSCode? I really don't like to split always and use the mouse to drag and drop... often I use two panes and I want to duplicate view in them. Hoping for something like the Sublime Origami plugin (which was perfect for me).
  • by jrwiegand on 2/2/17, 7:51 PM

    I am really hopeful for the enhanced scrollbar to be implemented soon. After that, I am pretty well set with vscode.

    https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/4865

  • by johnchristopher on 2/3/17, 10:52 AM

    Can anybody explain how I can get a `jump to function defintions` when working with PHP files ? (defintions might be in included files)

    This is the one thing I'd really like to figure out (be it out of the box or with a plugin).

  • by randyrand on 2/2/17, 7:08 PM

    How many people work on VSCode?
  • by rado on 2/3/17, 8:09 AM

    "Format on Paste" could convert me from Coda, but it doesn't seem to work. macOS, HTML mode, enabled the option, restarted, doesn't format until I manually execute the Format Document command.
  • by codingmatty on 2/2/17, 8:17 PM

    The problem that I have with VSC releases is that they are automatic, and I don't want to screw up my current workflow when I reset the application for an update. I have wasted hours before with VSC updates.
  • by ridiculous_fish on 2/2/17, 7:25 PM

    I'm used to being able to run my program via command-R or some other key equivalent. I haven't been able to find a way to do this conveniently from VSCode. How do other VSCode users run their programs?
  • by legulere on 2/2/17, 7:24 PM

    It's nice that they added an option to change the side of the close button. But way more important are sensible defaults, and that should be on the left side for mac os.

    Still I am a very happy user of Visual Studio Code.

  • by dlbucci on 2/2/17, 7:31 PM

    I was just thinking how much of a pain it was to switch from the output pane to the debug console, so I like the new tabs.

    Unfortunately, I can't seem to run my launch task in my second window anymore...

  • by amzans on 2/3/17, 8:00 AM

    For about a year it has been my favorite editor when writing in Go and pretty much anything that's not Java.

    I think the team behind it has been doing fantastic work. Thank you guys.

  • by Lord_Zane on 2/2/17, 9:33 PM

    Setting "window.menuBarVisibility": "hidden" works at first, but then dosent work if I close and open vscode, anyone else have this problem?
  • by aphextron on 2/2/17, 8:35 PM

    Am I alone in rejecting this new wave of Electron/node-webkit based text editors? Every single one I've tried has been horribly slow, unstable, and a giant resource hog. I gave Atom a shot, and it crashed on importing a .csv file of a few thousand lines. What I want from a text editor is simply that: a text editor. For anything more advanced, move up to a proper IDE. Why anyone uses these over something like Sublime or NP++ blows me away.
  • by billconan on 2/2/17, 6:33 PM

    I hope it could support gdb remote debugging
  • by didip on 2/2/17, 7:32 PM

    For those of you who use VS Code,

    how fast is it when grepping large number of files? Is it at least comparable to Sublime Text?

  • by raspo on 2/2/17, 7:18 PM

    I find it kind of funny that most screenshots are taken from MacOS :)
  • by theshire on 2/3/17, 5:18 AM

    Would be great if they implement Brackets Live preview mode.
  • by leeoniya on 2/2/17, 6:41 PM

    still no portable mode? :(
  • by Hydraulix989 on 2/2/17, 7:04 PM

    Waiting for the rollback update. ;-)