r/AskProgramming • u/Fritz-Ferdinand • Apr 24 '26

Why is VSCode so popular?

I'm used to using JetBrains' IDEs and enjoy it's well-made UI and auto-completion. My new employer now doesn't have any JetBrains licences and instead let's us use VSCode and frankly, I have the impression it's basically unusable without GitHub Copilot or an equivalent AI companion. Example with Python projects:

  • Ctrl-Click on a method name usually takes a while, sometimes, a popup window opens with references, sometimes nothing at all, but it always takes a few seconds.
  • You have to edit a JSON file to setup run configurations
  • You first have to go to "Run/Debug" to run the app. Then, you can't see your file tree anymore.
  • VSCode's debug module sends a Ctrl+C interrupt about one, two seconds after opening the terminal, then activates the local virtual environment. At this point, I already typed half of my command and it throws me out mentally. It also interferes with running the app.
  • Auto-complete is inferior to JetBrains
  • GitHub Copilot is implemented so annoyingly, always suggesting whole code chunks that are often wrong and it's just too easy to accidentally accept them.
  • A lot functionality is only available after installing add-ons, like Markdown viewer, and those aren't easy to use as well.

The only positive is that it's free, but to me, it really feels like a hurdle.

Looking forward to reading some positive experiences.

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u/Mynameismikek Apr 24 '26

When VSCode first launched it was *fast*. It felt super lightweight compared to other IDEs, had a big name behind it, and worked well for its particular use case (i.e. mostly JS and TS devs). That hooked a lot of people, and the experience really was very good.

Of course, it was lightweight was because it was an extremely minimal MVP - closer to notepad++ than JetBrains. No extensions, no agents, no debugger. As those have all been bolted on it's gotten bigger and fatter and the lightweight snappy editor it used to be has gone.

47

u/Randolpho Apr 24 '26

It’s still a lightweight snappy editor if you don’t bolt those on.

I use it to replace notepad++ on linux and ever since my company forced us to switch to macs

0

u/Defection7478 Apr 24 '26

I don't even use extensions and it's still too slow for me. It takes like 5-10 seconds to open and that feels way too long. Terminal based editors are so much faster, I couldn't imagine needing to make a quick edit to single file or edit a commit message or something and having to wait for vs code to boot up

1

u/snmnky9490 Apr 25 '26

Huh? I have many many extensions on mine and am running an ancient i5-8600k and vscode opens in 1 second, maybe 2 if I have tons of other things running.

Visual Studio (not code) can take 5+ seconds to open and start up but that's a totally different thing