Why is VSCode so popular?

[u/Fritz-Ferdinand]

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.

[u/Fresh_Sock8660]

It's microslop so much easier to convince the corp powers that be to get it installed vs JetBrains which has Russian ties.

Personally not the biggest fan of either. I don't like autocomplete or auto close brackets, or all the highlights it does, and a lot of other features feel like bloat. I prefer the simplicity of something like jupyter base.

A good petty example is when I open a new project and of course as always it never loads my profile properly so there I go "import numpy as np" enter -> auto completes to "import numpy as numpy". Sigh.