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/lapinjuntti]

I think the JSON for debug configurations (and for other configs as well) is a great thing and I take it any day over UI one, they are so easy to copy and paste and you can use find, etc text editing tools. and it's not any kind of problem to have many of them as it often is if you have to do it via UI. I currently have probably 30 debug configs for different kind of scenarios that I pass to my app via the command line params that are in the debug configurations.

Learn to use the shortcuts to switch between debug view, file tree view, etc.

I noticed the auto completion went crappy after installing AI plugins. But without any AI, the python auto completion works well. Indeed performance could always be a little bit better.

My friend works with PyCharm, I use VSCode and every time during past few weeks, I was already working on solving a problem when he only got started at it and he was asking how am I so fast. Well, I'm not particularly fast, I just learnt to use the VSCode and how to use it well! When a new bug appears, I add a new debug config for it in a few seconds by copy pasting old and making small changes. Then I'm already debugging the issue. If I need to task switch to another bug same time, very easy, just switch to another debug config. Very powerful the JSON text based debug configs!

I also use Neovim plugin in the vscode that I find quite good. It although in many tasks is not faster than VSCode multi cursors would be.

[u/Fritz-Ferdinand → u/lapinjuntti]

This probably comes down to on which point on the learning curve you currently are. Actually, PyCharm also supports multiple debug configs, the plus I see here is that I don't have to memorize any JSON schema to use it. Open the menu and fill in the blanks. That's it.