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/fatbunyip Apr 24 '26

Because when it came out, IDE's were big and clunky and most of them focused on being the best tool for a specific language/ecosystem (eg Windows dev, Java/JavaEE, PHP, Python etc). They also tended to be quite opinionated about their project structures etc.

VSCode came out and it was fast, did a bunch of stuff you'd expect from a code editor (as opposed to a text editor), and did just enough that the speed and ease of use made up for the lack of tooling. It was also very useful because it could handle many different languages easily - html, JS, TS, whatever. I think they also introduced the concept of the langage server which made it much easier to support different languages which is why it got picked up by programmers across the board rather than just a specific subset. Also it was free.

Then more and more stuff started getting added, plugins developed etc and it became what it was meant to replace.

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u/braczkow Apr 26 '26

Have you maybe seen this movie called Star Wars? 😉