Most of us hate Microsoft, and yet many of us use VSCode

Because the hate is based on their shitty OS. They did a fairly good job with VSCode. Our hate isn't blind.

VScode is the epitome of the EEE strategy. The core product is open-source, but it's filled to the brim with tracking and the official extensions have DRM. Yes, there's DRM on your python LSP.
Anyone who gives a shit should look for alternatives right away. The problem is just that there aren't any that are as easy to set up.
- Shouldn't using VSCodium solve the telemetry problem?
  Aren't there FOSS linters which work for VSCodium?
- And what would that DRM do?
- Thank god I do not use python.
Not hate in my case, but I don't like ms and it's because of the shit they have done in 90s and 2000s. Their current support of linux is not something I trust.
- @tomten @snek is linux your son or something?
Apparently in OP's case it is.

I hate Google but they gave us Go, Kubernetes. I hate Amazon but they gave us AWS. I plainly hate those companies, but adore the brilliant engineers that work there.

Google is also one of the most prolific contributors to Linux, and was the #3 corporate contributor in 2022. If you're avoiding everything Google had a hand in you literally can't use any GNU/Linux.
- It's almost as though the beauty of open source is that it doesn't matter who contributes, we all benefit from the result because we can all check each other's work and all use what we want
- Google is perfect at getting rich by shipping disgusting 90% FOSS 10% Tracking software. Literally all their Android Apps are closed source tracking malware. AOSP gets nearly no attention. But yeah, good Platforms
- Not to mention the Web itself. Google (and Apple and Microsoft) are major contributors to HTML as a standard.
This is a very very good answer, and perfectly portrays my feelings, as well.
Google is not deeply rooted in trying to harm the free/open software movement, unlike Microsoft. MS has always been the ideological enemy of Linux.
- So much they made WSL and made many developers happy. People acting like nothing has changed in more than 30 years.

Yet most project uses GitHub too you know...

This one is a bigger issue. One of the projects I used to contribute to moved to Gitlab, and saw a significant decrease in organic contributors. GitHub simply has more users, better SEO, and a better ecosystem
- Personally, I'd like for everything to be on Codeberg or something but I guess that's far away.
True but GitHub wasn't always Microsoft and at least in my experience moving between git providers is a pain
- GitHub has been recognized as harmful to the free software community at least as early as 2015, years before the Microsoft acquisition. See RMS email on GitHub.
- How is it a pain? You just change the origin on your existing project, and new projects you just use the new one to start with.

I only use vim.

~~i have been trapped for 2 years now... hope seems pointless~~

you get trapped in Vim because you dont know how to exit.
i get trapped because ive sunk so much time configuring
- May your vimrc be passed down through the ages
- 😂
  This is so true
- Agreed to the latter point. The only reason why I might not use vim is to copy-paste some code in and out of the file, in which case I prefer plain text editors.
  With that said, I'm a purist who uses vim without any external plug-ins (other than the files I wrote myself in ftplugin). Use vim on a remote machine whilst SSHed into it from a windows machine and wanting to copy-paste stuff in and out is a major pain which is why I downloaded Vscode in the first place. This piece of cancer is not touching my linux machine.

VSCode is the only Electron program I know of that does not feel like using McDonald's kiosk on virtual machine over remote desktop.

Over dailup
I'm thinking of making an Android app with electron (NC I don't know Java Kotlin whatever lmao) is performance that bad?
- Electron is for desktops OSes, so I think SE are talking about different things.
  And it's not only about performance, even when that programs are running on best machines it still looks like alien and not fit.

At least use VSCodium which is VSCode without telemetry/tracking ...

Unfortunately it's not a drop in replacement. The biggest issue was certain extensions are not available on codium.
No remote SSH extension which I need
- Maybe the one suggested in this thread might work for you?
  https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/discussions/693
If you want to support Microsoft then at least give them your personal data too. Don't tease the poor corpo :-(

My bigger problem is many swear on FLOSS, but using Apple is OK. Go to a FLOSS conference and there are Macs everywhere.

It's undeniable that Microsoft has had positive influences on the opensource world with language servers, debug adapter protocol, an inbrowser editor that is seemingly embedded in any website with a code editor, cross-platform C# (maybe that's a curse though, I dunno), linux contributions, and probably more I'm not aware of. Apple... I dunno. Vendor lock-in and more electronic trash?

VSCode isn't even that good, idk why people are obsessed with it.

For anything compiled, Jetbrains beats it 100:1, and for anything interpreted it's a couple tiers better than Kate.

Personally, I won't be losing sleep if I have to stop using VSCode.

If jetbrains is that much better really depends on the language. Also, jetbrains shit is damn expensive, so not a fair comparison.
- They have free 'community editions', I haven't really found a need for a licence. I've only used IntelliJ, PyCharm, and ~~ReSharper~~ though.
  Edit: I meant rider but I was using a student licence for it anyway.
- Also, jetbrains shit is damn expensive
  Is it though? Considering the amount of time you spent in it and the potential productivity increase it might give you I'd consider it very fairly priced.
The thing is the VS code handles everything (with extensions). If I want to use pandoc, or CSV to markdown table, python linting, Go,, whatever, there's extensions that can handle all of these equally well and consistently, for example format on save.
If I want to use jetbrains then the pycharm for python, intelliJ for Java, Goland for golang... Then there's licencing depending on whether I'm using a personal licence or corporate laptop, whether I have to get a licence from my employer etc.
For me it's not so much that it's so good, but that it works with everything in a consistent and obvious way plus I can install it on any machine I might be using.
- The Intellij plugin ecosystem is pretty good. Granted my day job is 80% Java/Kotlin but I also need python and ruby and go and the plug-ins have never let me down. I don’t have pycharm or Ruby Mine or Goland installed.
  The license also explicitly lets you use your work license for personal stuff or your personal license for work stuff. The only difference is who pays. You also don’t need a license to use the community edition.
  It’s also pretty good at CSV and markdown files. I might be biased because I spend probably 60 hours a week using Intellij but I don’t find any of your points against it to be accurate.
- Their licensing is pretty easy to work with IMHO. You can even get it for free if you contribute to GitHub enough.
Jetbrains IDEs are not free though are they?
I also quite like the light touch feel you get from code, I can use it for any language and am not going to have to navigate through hundreds of language specific features I don't need unless I install them myself
Kate might do similar but I can't imagine the extension pool is big enough to compete and I think at that point I'd just use a commandline editor instead
- Some are, the intellij java community edition is even open source. The paid ones are not too expensive, I pay around 200€ yearly for the all products pack and that's definitely worth it for a professional developer. If you are a student or open source developer, you can apply for free versions also.
VSCode is a modern emacs. Similar concept, a single editor to do everything via extensions. That's the selling point. "young people" never had the chance to work with a similar concept, this is why they found it so revolutionary (despite being a concept from the 70s).
I use it because I am forced to use a windows laptop at work, and emacs on windows is a painful experience
- How dare you! Emacs is modern emacs!
I use vscode because I do a lot of embedded.
Used to be that you had to jump through some hoops to make it work - make your own makefiles and stuff. Now, all the major vendors of MCUs are starting to develop vscode plugins as their "IDE" instead of those horrible ultramodified eclipse installs.
Exactly. Jetbrains stuff is great.
With one notble exception: Android Studio, but it only sucks only because of the way Android is. And there is no alternative anyway...
Right tool for the right job. Like I use VSCode for PowerShell on AWS Windows boxes over SSH, works great. But for Python or Terraform, JetBrains Suite is just better in everyway.
I write small scripts in NeoVim and larger projects in VSCodium because it provides most of what I need and doesn't consume a lot of resources. It's a good tool, you can also use forks or alternatives, and i think that's the spirit of open source, isn't it?
I also have been trying Kate, works greats and with even better performance.
I like VSCode because I can run it in a development container and because its the only FOSS IDE with an extension for IEC 61131-3 ST that I am aware of

Your daily reminder that VSCode is shit not because of telemetry (take your time foil hat off for one second and hear me out and I say that jokingly with love) but because the extension marketplace is not allowed to be accessed by third party tools (INCLUDING CODIUM) and even then many of the extensions are proprietary, closed source. You're not even allowed to distribute compiled VSIX files. It's disgusting. Reading about the troubles gitpod faced that led to the (now) Eclipse Marketplace (idk the name, but it's for VS Code plugins, don't be tricked, it's just owned by Eclipse foundation) is disheartening.

Oh shit really? I knew their debugger was locked down didn't know extensions were
Codium seems to have all the same extensions though, has someone else just setup their own marketplace?
- Yeah, there is an open marketplace. It's the one Codium uses by default. The problem is there's no way for the controllers to just mirror everything because of the licenses. Also some of the extensions don't work with Codium even if you download manually from the website because of bullshit like tweaking the name or whatever.

Those that truly dislike MS and telemetry won't.

If I'm using non-free it is Jet Brains.

I tend to use Kate, KDevelop.

MS still slurping code into Copilot from Github and telemetry in VSCode.

MS still slurping code into Copilot from [...] telemetry in VSCode.
Would you happen to have a source for that? At a cursory glance, it looks like VSCode only does that if you're using Copilot, but if you don't have the extension installed they aren't.
- VScode is proprietary and is a black box. The scary think for me is that you don't know what the program is doing
- Unless Quake was made with Copilot, that seems very unlikely:
  https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/oc9qj1/copilot_regurgitating_quake_code_including_sweary/
Could you get Kate to work with LSP for say svelte or vuejs ?
- Kate has native LSP support, which by default uses "typescript-language-server" for JavaScript. As I don't really do much JavaScript stuff I can't say how well it works, or if it works with those particular frameworks.
  https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kate/kate/kate-application-plugin-lspclient.html

VSCode is an open source IDE. Its biggest rival is the JetBrains suite. When the alternatives are proprietary, VSCode is a win.

VScode isn't foss. It just contains some open source code.
- It contains mostly open source code. The proprietary binary MS distributes adds very little proprietary stuff to it. You can use the open source version Code - OSS just fine or use VSCodium which is based on that
- Aren't those features just telemtry and the plugin store (for which there is an open source replacement btw)
Most of Jetbrain's tools have community editions as well.
- The community editions are still proprietary, and they put the most useful tools behind the paywall.
- PyCharm community is amazing.
Have you tried any of the JetBrains products, they are great.
- I did for a few years. Eventually I had to switch to VSCode because any given Jetbrains product is only good at a single language, and constantly switching Jetbrains products is a nightmare. Now that I've been using VSCode for a while, there are some extension that are so critical to my workflow Jetbrains is virtually useless to me without them.
- The jetbrains default hotkeys is in direct conflict to the "typical defaults" for hotkeys you see in the world
- I had a job that required me to use JetBrains. I would've preferred to use VSCode.

Its not only Microsoft crap, its also an Electron app!

I use Kate.

Neovim user here. Granted it takes some time to setup properly but it’s really fast with navigating through files, lsp functions and doing a search in thousands of files.

I found vscode too slow and bloated for my taste.

Having come from full fat visual studio and using fairly fast machines VS code is a breeze to use.
Though I can't imagine it can compare to commandline stuff in that regard obviously
Is there much reason to learn vim nowadays? I was under the impression it's mostly around for people who got used to it back in the day
- Knowing vim is pretty essential for working on servers. My usual setup is ssh + tmux + vim. I suppose you could substitute nano for vim if it's installed.
- If you have to ask, maybe not. But if you're mostly "keyboard driven", code and edit files a lot, it's (vim or neovim) very much worth trying out.
- It’s great if you get used to it and put in the time to set it the way you want it. I find IDE’s very bloated.
- I'm in my 6th semester and use neovim so no it's not mostly around for people who got used to it back in the day. A lot of my fellow students use it as well. It's the only editor I use because you can use it to edit a single file as well as a whole project and everything is always how I want it to be. Also once you get used to it I guarantee you, you will wonder how people navigate code only using mouse and the arrow keys. It is just a beauty to quickly copy a code block or change a word with 3 keystrokes.
- For me personally I am most productive in Neovim. But if you can’t be arsed to fiddle around with config files to get things set up it’s probably not worth the effort.
  Use what works best for you.
- I've been using VIM for 7 years or so, at this point. I've configured it the way I like.
  The point of using it is that there is simply no other text editor which lets you edit text in such a manner. Granted, the keyword shortcuts can seem strange and obtuse in the beginning, but get used to it and you wouldn't want to use anything else anymore. I'm using the VIM extension in VSCode right now and dearly miss my .vimrc which I configured so carefully on my Linux machine.
- As noted by others, if you do work on remote hosts, it's priceless. That's how I got used to it and I now find VSCode slow and unintuitive.
Just the matter of taste. For some users who want to get to code quickly, they use VSCode without the hassle. For some power users who want to have extreme extensibility, they use Emacs/Vim.

Don't use vscode, use vsCodium, all the goodness of vscpde with none of the sleezy ms tracking

It's kinda like using chromium instead of chrome, isn't it? Don't use either; use firefox.
No idea what the editor equivalent would be though... Emacs or vim maybe? Next to noone uses it, but it has so much more potential, if only it where widely adopted.
- There really isn't for free, at least as far as I am aware. You are probably right that Emacs can come somewhat close with the right packages and setup, but VSCode extensions just makes everything so much quicker and easier. JetBrains is also similarly good, but it's obviously not FOSS, and I guess it would be considered a full IDE not a text editor.
- Next to nobody uses in your bubble maybe. Not on my watch tho.
I mentioned vscodium. I believe many of the official extensions have telemetry too though
- The extension marketplace VSCodium uses by default requires that extensions have telemetry off by default
The extension list is sorely lacking tho.

"Most of us hate microsoft" is honestly a pretty bold claim. They're just a company that makes software. The vast majority of the world's Linux users--which is to say, professionals who build or manage software that runs in Linux--don't care about them one way or another.

This sub might have an ideological skew, but you still don't know what people in here think about Microsoft.

Microsoft has been a pain for Linux professionals and maintainers for decades. M$ called Linux a cancer and actively developed strategies to harm us. Look up halloween documents. No reason to believe they are different now.
No I hate MS. I won't ever forget the pain that was developing edge cases around Internet Explorer (fuck IE 6, that shit was the worst).
- To be fair, when ie6 came out it was a really good browser. The concept of evergreen browsers wasn't broadly a thing back in 2001. Windows XP was a huge success and there was no way to convince the world to move off of it and many companies built their intranets specifically around ie6. I think it was Korea that built all their banking off of Active X.
I'm talking about the ideological skew
Even the linux memes communities/subs have better takes than the purist ones lol
I'm an old OS/2 user. Count me as a Microsoft hater.

You csn hate a company and like a product. They aren't mutually exclusive.

This was a tough lesson for me to learn when Pirates of the Caribbean came out. 😠
- https://youtu.be/GI6CfKcMhjY
  I'll just leave this right here.

This reminds me of when my dad holds an ideological belief about something based on politicians he doesn't like who support it.

"Climate change isn't real because Al Gore..."

"Supply Side Jesus isn't valid because Al Franken..."

"Affirmative Action is racist because Al Sharpton..."

Actually now that I think about it, maybe he just doesn't like people named Al...🤔

But anyway, if it's open source, and the source is sufficiently audited by third parties, and I'm able to compile and run it myself, and running it doesn't have undesired behavior (telemetry etc) then I don't care who wrote it, because it does exactly what I need it to.

Unfortunately VSCode is not an open-source product, it's only based on an open-source product. It's the difference between Chrome and Chromium. VSCode does have telemetry. VSCode is licensed under Microsoft's proprietary license.
So I suspect you don't use any extensions or found a way not to get them from Microsoft?
- I don't use vscode, I was just explaining that my requirements for using an open source product for my personal uses are independent of who wrote the code. I'm never going to say "I won't use X source code just because Y wrote it", that's just silly. If I have the code, and it does what I would want it to do if I wrote it myself, and it doesn't do anything I don't want it to do, then I don't care where it came from.
  Lately I've been using Neovim.

"I hate Google and their dropping useful products and stalking me constantly," I post from my Pixel 3A while listening to YouTube Music.

Choosing not to use good software from the same company just because another software they offer is subpar would be an unreasonable decision.

Kind of the conclusion I'd come to.
Would you use excel if it were on Linux? It's one of the other few Microsoft products I think is actually pretty good.
Obviously not foss but still
- Microsoft Office suite is obviously superior to its concurrents. If it were available on linux I'd use it, despite being about FOSS ideology. Sometimes, non-FOSS can be better alternatives. However, OnlyOffice is still neat and gets the job done.
- Ok but most people only use very basic features of Excel and would be fine with a version from the early 2000's. The spreadsheet market has caught up and they'd be fine with basically any product at this point. The only thing propping up Microsoft Office is the subtle incompatibilities they've slipped into their file formats, that people don't want to deal with. That and the fact most people get to use their Office free one way or another, and "it's what I'm used to".
  I don't think I've touched actual desktop Office in more than a decade now. Even in a corporate environment it's mostly their online version that gets used 90% of time by 90% of people.
- I prefer google docs because it’s accessible through a browser wherever I want.

It's a tool. You use the best tool available. Getting your day job done is your bottom line, you can't afford to be any less productive. If you're a foss coder doing it on your own time, go crazy. Using the most efficient tool isn't the same thing as supporting a company's bad practices, the real world isn't black and white.

That's a bit black and white of you, isn't it? I don't like this approach ("can't afford to be any less productive"). I am a freelancer and I certainly can afford to be a bit less productive and earn a little less money by supporting and using free software only. And making you belive that you have to use the most efficient tool - no matter what - is exactly part of what keeps bad acting companies successful.
Using the most efficient tool isn’t the same thing as supporting a company’s bad practices
In some cases it is. Using google, or voice assistants, or chatgpt might be convenient for you, it might even make you the most productive you can be, but it's also supporting their platform and any associated bad practices.
I don't have any issues with using proprietary or closed source software, but that doesn't mean you should always use the best tool available. Because, you see, the real world isn't black and white 😉.
Productivity vs efficiency

Well it's really noob friendly. The introductory courses in programming all tell you to use it and it takes some time and experience to find alternative editors that 1. you like better, and 2. won't confuse you more than the course itself does.

I used to use VSCodium and the Vim extension. Then I downloaded Neovim and started configuring it, but I was never really satisfied with the config. Then I found Doom Emacs. It was pretty much the thing I tried turning Neovim into.

But I wouldn't recommend Doom Emacs to a first-year student that is still learning the fundamentals.

Edit: typos

Emacs will be there for you, once vscode gets abandoned.

We are talking about a code editor, not a whole operating system!
/s
- You will be delighted to read about Evil mode, which is a vim-like editor for the Emacs operating system. 😁
- Emacs will be there for you, once ~~vscode~~ Windows gets abandoned.
  FTFY.

I don't

If you like vscode you can always use vscodium

Potato-potato. You support Microsoft if you use either.
- True

I don't use VSCode for the exact reason. I used VSCodium but switched to Neovim. I see this problem more with GitHub (also owned by Microsoft). I was not able to get off GitHub yet, but I'm planning to switch to Codeberg probably. I heard that GitLab is also closed source?

Gitlab is open source, but some features are only available in their Enterprise Edition. As the name suggests, unless you are looking for an alternative for a large company, the open source "Community" Edition is enough for all your needs.
I am also facing the same issue with Github and switching to codeberg. My first hurdle is clouflare pages not sourcing codeberg for website source, only giving options for github and gitlab

My hate for Microsoft is based on the Embrace-Extend-Extinguish business tactics they use since the 80's instead of competing on product quality.

Take a look at the recent computing history and you'll find plenty of examples of great software killed by MS shitty alternatives that were the default because of the stranglehold on the OS market.

Not even sure it's EEE, they just clone and provide the clone of a good product for free and/or as part of windows.
Their products are usually only second best, but kill the market leader anyway.

ITT people having their minds blown by the fact the creator and the creation are two different things.

I use NeoVim, but I don't hate Microsoft (they contribute a lot to Linux kernel). What is wrong with me?

I prefer Linux but I do think that the hate for Windows is blown out of proportion. Teams is a whole different story.
- Oh god teams is a great example of a product that is only successful because of a walled garden
  Don't think I've ever heard an opinion of teams more positive than "it's good enough"
Nothing is wrong with you, you use NeoVim.
For anyone who likes neovim but wants a little extra UI, I've been liking LunarVim recently. Unfortunately their install process is not trivial, but worth it IMO. I still use NeoVim for quick editing of files due to the slightly longer boot time of LV, but for extended writing its nice.
- Been using NeoVide for a while for that matter. It's mostly ok. I'll definitely give LV a try, thanks for the suggestion

It’s hard to separate yourself from it when the company you work for uses it heavily and leans on some of the extensions for things like containers.

I used to be a hardcore Sublime Text user until it started formatting all of my code like garbage. I had plugins conflicting with each other and couldn’t find alternatives that did what I needed without clashes happening. Plus, barely anything is alive over on the Sublime side.

It’s hard to say no to an editor with that big of a community. You can find 100 plugins for your one need, vs 2 on the Sublime side (and you end up finding that those 2 plugins haven’t been updated in years).

You can always fallback to VSCodium.

The ability to open gigabytes of log files though, vscode will kill your machine while sublime text can do it without sweating. Also, vscode sometimes used a lot of memory after running for a while, compared to sublime text's minimal memory usage. Still, the killer feature of vscode is the remote development IMO, super useful when using a laptop and working outside. Microsoft seems to refuse opensourcing that part so can't use it on vscodium.

Which goes to show that we don't blindly hate Microsoft, and that it's not that we refuse to use Windows because it's made by them, but because it's shit.

I just want Atom back, or anything that works like it. I want a text editor with a folder tree browser. Syntax highlighting is nice. And decent full project text search.

I use vim for writing code, and atom for taking notes, or just reading code. Then they shut down atom and it sucks.

I hate that I need to dedicate so much time to finding new tools in tech. It’s nice that vim doesn’t change.

Pulsar is the continuation of Atom
- Really? That’s awesome thank you!
what about sublime? it has projects, folder file trees...
- I switched from Sublime to Textmate and then to Vim a long time ago then added Atom back in because everybody else used it. I’m not so good at retracing my steps decision wise.
  I’ve been using sublime.
  I guess something about the “your code as a thumbnail” navigation feature kinda bothers me. Seems to go against the idea of small, readable files.
  Back when I loved that feature, I was still writing 1000-line files.

Free software doesn't have owners, that is kinda the point.

It really does though. Someone controls the project and decides what's in or out. Other people engineer around that project, and the current latest version of that project becomes a de facto standard.
So you can either use that and let the people who control the project be in charge, or you can find enough developer time to maintain 99% compatibility as the de facto standard project changes stuff and the ecosystem you need to use follows.

If Windows was open source it wouldn’t be as bad

It's not the closed source that bothers me it just feels painful to use
Applications should not take that long to open on an nvme and an i7
It would reveal the hidden DOS running in the background doing all the work
ReactOS lol
Not AS bad, but it's still shitty IMO based on design posture and weird design decisions

You use whatever works best for you. Microsoft Lens, on Android, is still unmatched for scanning, correcting perspective, and cleaning up whiteboards. No OSS tool comes close - and, believe me, I tried to use others (or, other; I think OpenScan is the only thing that attempts something similar). It would be foolish to not use a tool that you like using and doesn't have any hidden consequences, merely because of on opinion.

I don't think VSCode is particularly good, myself, but the point remains: it's free, I haven't heard anything about it surreptitiously sending info to MS, and if it works for people, then great.

I agree with being pragmatic, but the opinion of hating Microsoft isn't unfounded. There are pragmatic reasons to avoid building up and entrenching yourself in tooling that doesn't respect you as a user or is controlled by companies that has interests that don't align with yours.
- I didn't say iy was wrong to hate Microsoft. I said that it's silly to ignore the best tool on only principle. You might not want it because it costs money, or collects telemetry, or because you want to avoid vendor lock-in; these are all reasons that have a grounded cost, even if the yool is best in class. But just because you don't like the company itself?
  If MS took VS Code away tomorrow, devs would switch to something else. That's a cost I'm not willing to pay, but if they are... eh. If Microsoft took Lens away, well, we're fucked, because the OSS community has not offered any solution that works better than just taking a picture and cleaning it up in GIMP.
I think the proprietary version MS distributes does send telemetry data to them but I personally just use VSCodium, which is based on the open source VS Code version.
- Probably. I have no doubt that Lens (the aforementioned tool I used to use) does. In the career I had, I had to give up the telemetry, because I had to use Lens. There is literally no practical alternative. Sometimes, you just have to pay that cost. Heck, I'd have bought a telemetry-free alternative from someone else if it worked as well, and if anyone offered one. Which they don't.
  I'm beating that dead horse because it baffles me everytime I think about it that, in a veritable app ocean of calculator, chat, and everything else, Lens is apparently unique.

I use vscodium and ms office 2016, fight me

check out LibreOffice's contextual groups
- On Fedora. Well. People hate Red Hat so... 😂

I wouldn't say I "hate" Microsoft (or Apple, or Google), but I recognize the harm they do to the free software movement and to the technology world in general. I wouldn't avoid a good quality free software just because it's made by a GAFAM company (as long as I stick with the free parts and avoid proprietary extensions), just like I wouldn't use proprietary software just because it's not made by GAFAM.

The point isn't to hate GAFAM but to seek freedom and control over your computing.

I'll be interested to see how JetBrains's Fleet works out. I like Rider a lot more than full Visual Studio (also Rider is actually available on Linux).

I was using Atom, but that died. I work with both Python and Fortran, and VSCode works for my usecase, but I'm open to suggestions.

Pulsar was forked from Atom and lives on!
https://github.com/pulsar-edit/pulsar
- Didn't know about this, will definitely give this a shot. There's also Lapce, which doesn't use Electron and looks promising.
- I almost see Pulsar as the anti-VSCode/Microsoft in a way. Microsoft slowed development and killed Atom in order to promote use of VSCode. Instead of letting it die we decided to keep it alive and offer it as a viable alternative. So in some sense it almost exists just to spite Microsoft's attempts to kill it.
- Nice! I used atom for about a year before it was discontinued and switched to just using Kate. Definitely going to have to checkout pulsar, thanks for dropping it here.
I switched to neovim. You can also use a text editor for more basic stuff

most of us hate the government and yet we use the roads

I feel like microsoft's gameplan is less "everyone must use windows" these days and more "we want to gatekeep tech on as many levels as possible". I'm wary of relying on anything they put out. I think we've all recently seen what big tech companies do when they decide its time to monetize more aggressively.

Right now helix is pretty good for what I do with it.

I rather use notepad++ masterpiece

Do you run it though bottles?

@flashgnash

VSCodium: https://vscodium.com/

I actually mentioned vscodium in my post but at the end of the day it's still a Microsoft product and the extensions still have telemetry from what I hear
- Wait. If I remember correctly they use a separate extension store for vscodium. If you want the default microsoft one you have to set that up manually. You're dismissing it outright, but vscodium is actually a valid alternative without any telemetry.

I was using Sublime Text for many years. Even after Atom came out I still used ST3. However, ST development is understandably slow compared to VSCode and it is now so far behind that loyalty isn't enough of a reason to continue using it.

I've been using sublime since forever as well; Atom never really felt like a valid alternative because it was so so slow. VSCode still feels kinda slow but not to a degree that gets to be annoying. Still I could never get used to it. It breaks some system keyboard shortcuts that I use heavily (alt + arrow keys for example) and takes forever to parse files (to make a list of all functions in the project for example).
I wish sublime would update more often and have all the cool new things that come to VSCode every other week, but at the end of the day it still works better and doesn't really lack anything that's actually useful (except maybe for a few months before st4 came out).
- It breaks some system keyboard shortcuts
  And so does Sublime Text: CTRL+SHIFT+U for inserting Unicode characters doesn't work in it. :(
  I recently switched from ST4 to VS Code (Codium actually) because of this and because it's easier to set up a Python debugger.
I love Jetbrains. As a company, how they treat their users, the way they do subscription models (subscribe yearly, and if you unsubscribe, keep the license for the version you have still, including the ability to re-download that version), and just the prodding quality overall.

Make something better and I'll switch to it

Neovim
- Neovim works well. I also use just a generic text editor sometimes
Helix

Agreed, I share the same frustration (including for Chromium) as if developers were somehow blissfully ignorant of the political and economical power they give away to company that use and abuse their work, truly self flagellating.

I use vscodium btw.

I don't use it.

Which is why I said many and not all
- Sure. Just wanted to say this in case the hypothesis is skewed. I use Github, which also belongs to Microsoft. But I guess if you're looking for a proper IDE and something that's widely adapted and has lots of plugins available... There aren't many alternatives to choose from...

Developing in C# in Corporate, so C# debugger only works on VS Code sadly

Yeah I noticed that in my debug output the other day, how fucked is that that they only allow their debugger with Microsoft ides
You can use ILSpy based debugger for .net application. One debugger which i really like it called dnSpy
- Work on codium? I only know to reverse the dll using ilspy
Jetbrains Rider?
- Perform worst for me, so I skip it. IntelliJ tools isn't helping me productive sadly

If you're a true MS hater you can't use TypeScript either. /sarcasm

If you work as developer, depending on where you work at using code editors with features like remote SSH is a must. If you are just a hobbyist even coding on Nodepad++ will do.

I love vscode. But this thread made me want to learn neovim just so I don't have all my eggs on a single basket.

Vscode, the chrome browser with a ide suit. No thanks

Vim. viiiiiiiiim

And vscode doesn't even work properly. The amount of colleagues I have using it for C++ and they can't even get intellisense working with the f-ing thing. It's bonkers they work that way. It takes them ages to do anything, and its not a case of them being super experienced and not needing those aides.

Playing the devil's advocate here, even IDEs like Visual Studio and IntelliJ have multiple times crashed on me or taken ages to update a single line on intellisense. C++ is simply a language where a dynamic LSP is everything but easy to make.
- I have nothing to say about CLion. I have been using it for large codebases, rust and C++, for ages. Even with neovim+LSP I get better results than vscode

I use na-no :3

I get confused by non-modal text editors.
I keep trying to switch to Micro but my fingers are too used to the bonkers keyboard shortcuts

It's definitely one of those "a broken clock is still right twice a day" situations. It's a good product and I find it invaluable for PowerShell scripting. I have, however, been trying to dial in emacs for PowerShell.

Vim and screen have always met my coding needs

How do you use screen for programming?
- There's nothing worse than SSHing into a remote machine, coding some stuff in vim and losing the SSH connection randomly. Especially when you're working in a controlled remote environment instead of locally, screen is super useful to keep your place when you get back.
- screen or tmux are invaluable for programming in the terminal. both for opening more than one shell in a session, and for not accidentally closing a session just because you accidentally closed the window or lost connection. Check this out.
- To switch between writing code and executing it

I use neovim for the vast majority of the programming I do but I do still have VSCode installed. Maybe I should just delete it? I opened it after I saw this post and there was a whole bunch of extension updates just sitting there.

Kinda wish GNOME builder was a bit better at being a general purpose editor. That's just because I'm a bit of a GNOME/GTK pervert though and I would love to use a sexy looking app for dev work.

I need to use VSCode at university because their version of neovim is too outdated for my config...

Have you tried compiling neovim for your own personal use? There are a bunch of possible issues that can arise, like lack of enough space or required dependencies, but if you miss neovim it might be worth trying
- well i ended up just downloading the latest release build on github and symlinked the binary to my .local/bin, and it works now
- for debian based systems, there is a PPA with nightly builds. I use a quick and dirty python script via systemd to schedule nightly builds from the PPA's source pkg on both debian and popOS with good results. worst case you can roll back to a prevous build of the pkg, tho Ive never had to

Even Codium is pretty bloated though since it's still electron.

Also Sublime Text supremacy

Isn't it proprietary?

I honestly don't get it. I had to use it on a job until recently and needed a few plugins for it to be useful. Every major plugin either got worse over time or never fully functioned to begin with. On top of that, it was sometimes slow as fuck despite me having a rather strong machine.

It borrowed the concept from old editor such emacs. It is a modern emacs. A single editor to do literally everything via plugins. The idea is that one needs to learn a single editor to master everything.
It is very powerful for people who do multiple things. It's not worthy if the whole job is to simply writing java or c#. In that case a dedicated ide is better

Just learned about zed and helix yesterday.

whhats that
Tried Kakoune? It's not bad.
I have helix, but how's zed?
For helix, plugins are on the way
Zed is only available for MacOS

vim and neovim actually hold a pretty significant marketshare on Linux. a lot of developers use MacOS or Windows, so what does it matter if one more small thing is proprietary? It obviously does matter, but people don't think of it that way.

i use sublime instead

Because it's one of the few good microsoft products

baby steps. ill be on neovim one day i swear!

Just start practicing the vim motions in vscode

Intellisense is the reason

Intellisense dies when you write heavily templated C++ code (and there are valid production cases for that: in my job we write lots of expression templates to produce optimized math code). In contrast, I found clangd to be pretty responsive even in such scenarios.
- vscode + clangd plugin FTW
I thought that was just their term for code aware features like jumping to defn/references, doc popups, completions, renaming and so on. That is in no way unique to vscode.

Not me, i use and like a lot QtCreator... Granted, i work with C/C++ so... But its Open Source, cross-platform, has tons of integeations with analyzers debuggers and various tools.

Kdevelop never triggered my bells and CodeBlocks just doesnt feels right for me, but thats me.

For everyrhing else vim or kate depending on how i feel.

It's quite common knowledge, Microsoft does horrible operating systems but great dev tools. Visual Studio (not vscode) was amazing to develop software.

And thanks god we don't have to deal with Eclipse anymore.

The real question would be why the open source community cannot create a better dev tool that's not outmatched by a glorified text editor.

I actually do not use it, not out of any kind of moral stance but it just runs slow for me.

I hate Windows. I'm too young for all that Microsoft drama, so they're fine in my books.

Y’all use VSCode??? Whatever happened to good ol’ Sublime Text?

Both are text editors, but VSCode's plugin system and various config options can turn it a fully fledged IDE for the languages of your choice.
Besides, Sublime is exactly that: good, old.
- But this is a Linux community. What about doing one thing well?
Sublime Text is proprietary, which makes it a non-starter for many including myself. VS Code, on the other hand, might be developed by Microsoft but there is a liberated version called VSCodium that has none of the telemetry and such.
That being said, on GNU/Linux I prefer Kate.

I'm thinking of ditching it. It's been pretty awful lately. A lot of the official extensions I relied on have regressed to the point of being useless.

Also, releasing a FLOSS editor and then forcing you to use a proprietary build with telemetry if you want to debug .NET code is the most Microsoft thing ever.

What's interesting about it?

I don't hate Microsoft that much. But I do hate that remote ssh for a while didn't work on codium resulting in having no choice but to use vscode and getting used to it.

Have you had a merge conflict yet? A breeze to manage with GH Desktop + VSC

A merge conflict is a breeze to handle in the terminal. I haven’t seen any tools that improve on that substantially.
- 5 years of merging conflicts, I still don't know when to use --theirs or --ours
I use Linux on my home desktop and my work desktop but I also keep a Windows install on my work machine when I need to test Windows things there. On Windows, I haven't found a better Git GUI than fork.dev. It's not open-source but it is what one of my favorite creators calls "organic software": Ukrainian husband and wife duo that warms my heart. The evaluation period is unlimited without nags. I've found it to be the perfect Git teaching tool and the best merge conflict resolver I've ever seen.
I still use TortiseGit just for merge conflicts. The editor is more intuitive to me.
I've done it with vsc, haven't used GH desktop do you use it alongside vsc or does it just do a similar thing?

For all their faults, Microsoft are rather good at languages and the tooling around them.

I'm not sure why people are surprised by that. I mean they are a software company. Their procedures, tools, methodology etc. for software development have been refined over the past 50 years. You don't take over the world with just evil tendencies, you also need to put out decent software in a competent manner.

If you really dont like a company and its products you must vote with your wallet or usage in this case. Its that simple. The reason why people that dislike M$ still use vscode and/or windows is simply they actually dont care that much and mostly make noise. I vote with my wallet and have a full jetbrains subscription, I use most their IDE's everyday and its been great. Anyone really depending on income through coding must acquire the best tools available if they are reasonably priced so be it.

vote with your wallet or usage in this case
In the case of companies as large as Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc sadly this is not enough. I suggest reading Chokepoint Capitalism (Giblin and Cory 2022) in which they highlight the numerous mechanisms, legal or not, they use to prevent actual competition. So... yes vote with your "wallet or usage" but also with your actual political vote in the hope that people elected will enforce existing policies, e.g antitrust, so that competition can genuinely exist.
- 100% agree. Participation in the election process is a must if you're in a country that allows one to do so. I've not heard about this book, will have a look.
You don't vote with your wallet or usage, you abstain from voting, and that's it

And one tought: i do despise microsoft and i dont care if any of its products seems good. They re there to infiltrate and destroy, they have always been from msdos times, and rest assured thats what they will do also with vscode/codium.

Do not fall into this trick, make good products better, dont piggy back on who showed to stick it in your rear end again and again over time.

Definitely dislike MS, generations of my workstations have small, yellow "Microsoft Free Workstation" stickers on their monitors, but VSCodium (in my case) is not really bad.

Also I really like the Xbox360 console and (as a hacker and maker) still love the first Kinnect. The Kinnect is an excellent piece of sensor-hardware, was rather cheap when purchased in used condition and it works very well with Linux.

I'm not sure why people even use vscode over vim

I also use Bing. I hate big companies in general, but I will use their products if they're good. Google is an exception, because to use their products I'd have to sign into my phone, and give them even more access, which I don't want to do.

kibi master race

You can hate Michael Jackson, but listen to Billie Jean.

That is a very good analogy

Netbeans for the win(at least for Java, I don't know how good it is for other languages)

Why would anyone on Linux use VSCode??????

Because it's a good editor, it's open source and have Linux binaries.
The MS extensions are quite convenient, like Live Share and the MS C/C++ extension. There are equivalent free versions, but those are more work to setup and might not have the full feature set.
Best LSP client list outside of NeoVim. If you want to be productive, NeoVim and VSCode are the top choices right now

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

@flashgnash also edge is a great browser we just hate it because of the way they force you to use it

And, you know, it being one of the most invasive spywares around.
The performance with Edge is surprisingly good. The built in spyware, not so much.
Edge's bookmark solution is way better than the other browsers. I respect that ingenuity. From a distance.
I actually really like edge, if it weren't for telemetry I'd probably still use it on linux
Once upon a time Internet Explorer was a great browser. Until they successfully forced the majority to use it.

I hated Microsoft in the 90's and 00's but today's MS is not that bad. VSCode in particular is a good example of MS now being a good citizen of Open Source.

And as other said, if you don't like the telemetry in VSCode there are forks without it.

We got to be mature. Microsoft (and many other corporations) are a problem due to their unfair practices. But this is not a moral war against them, when we are not the problem. If we have vscodium, which is opensource and it has telemetry removed, which is the problem?

I would be happy if they didn't made the internet a worse place, if they weren't greedy billionaire assholes, if they didn't have a monopoly, but vscode does not affect my sleep.

Mature would be to know that you are the problem and that this is a moral war. The problem is your dependency on a tool made by a bad acting company.
- In what way is that a problem?

Run three flavours of Linux at home and love Microsoft. Why does everything have to be in opposition?

- On the first we can agree. But that certainly isn’t how they behave now.
  On the second, I dare say that’s “what if” conjecture. You could easily argue that the de facto monopoly of Windows allowed computers to be on every desk which lead to the world today. I’m not sure that’s the case, but the argument stands on no less flimsy ground than yours IMHO.

I hate Windows and dislike a lot of Microsoft products, but I think we're way past Microsoft being the bad guy. They kinda like Linux now, and probably do more good than bad for it. There are much worse companies in tech, I think Microsoft's worst crimes as of late is creating Teams and being boring.

Please look up "Embrace, extend, extinguish". VScode is open-source for now, but all the microsoft extensions you need to turn it into an IDE have DRM on them and microsoft puts work into trying to make those extensions not work with VScode forks.
WSL is the same thing. They start by embracing linux and soon they'll start installing MS crap into the guest system or shipping their own distro that's filled with it. This is the extend part. The final goal is to extinguish desktop linux and make everything WSL to be able to track it all and harvest shitloads of data.
- I'm well familiar with EEE, I've used Linux off and on for something like 20 years, back when Microsoft really was the boogeyman. I don't think VS code qualifies for this category since it was originally (ish, has roots in Atom I think) open source and Microsoft. It was never embraced/extended, and extinguishing their own product makes no sense. (btw I don't even use VS Code, shit vim plugins in my experience, jetbrains all the way)
  WSL IMO is a concession on Microsoft's part, because most dev tools nowadays are being made primarily with Linux in mind. It's what makes Windows at all usable as a development platform in many situations. And pretty much nothing developed specifically for WSL. All WSL has on a normal Linux distro is integration with the host system AFAIK.
Speaking of crimes, Wsl2 is GUILTY and shall be judged INSUFFICIENT

nope, I deeply hate microsoft and I don't use their products. Millennials don't know the history.

Most of this thread reminds me how unbearable the open source community can be.

- The FOSS absolutism is exhausting.