
Visual Studio Code 1.5 - out_of_protocol
https://code.visualstudio.com/updates?
======
msoad
VSCode + TypeScript is an amazing experience for us poor JavaScript developers
that never enjoyed proper autocomplete and refactoring in our editors. Writing
JavaScript feels like writing random bash scripts with no help now. TypeScript
is freaking awesome and you should start using it! :)

~~~
aviraldg
Try WebStorm. I'm surprised at how few people use it, given the quality of the
autocomplete and code assistance (and the fact that it works just as well with
ES6 as it does with TypeScript!)

~~~
pjmlp
On this day and age many don't want to pay for tools.

Sometimes I wonder if Emacs and Vi would be so appreciated if they were
commercial as well, without any FOSS version available.

~~~
markcerqueira
> On this day and age many don't want to pay for tools.

Strange logic: if everyone followed that train of thought, we'd all settle for
whatever quality tools are available so long as the price is $0. I'd much
rather pay for a valuable tool than use a subpar free tool.

~~~
labrador
It's a common fallacy to associate quality with price. Generally yes, but not
always. Sublime Text certainly isn't 70 dollars better than Atom or VS Code.

~~~
drchickensalad
I see you haven't abused multicursors.

~~~
ryanplant-au
VSCode and Atom both have multicursors.

~~~
drchickensalad
Much, much less powerful fotms of them.

------
johnfn
I really liked Visual Studio Code, but I couldn't really use it without a Vim
plugin. So over the last few months I've been working on this one:

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevi...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim)

I think it's gotten a _lot_ better, and if lack of vim keybindings was
something that was holding you back from trying VSC, I highly encourage you to
try it again!

~~~
alfanick
Thanks from a user ;) I cannot use any editor without vim keybindings,
furthermore I love "relativenumber", however VSCode gives no API for relative
numbers (there is some hacky gutter images extension, but it is really hacky,
slow and bad looking). I've made a fork with relative numbers built-in
[https://github.com/alfanick/vscode](https://github.com/alfanick/vscode). Not
going to do pull request, at least not yet - unit testing and i18n required.

BTW I do not use TypeScript (or JS), but it was quite easy to write, still I
was quite surprissed how messy VS Code codebase is.

~~~
ashwinne
I find relative number very useful to jump lines. Please consider showing
current line number for current line. And go ahead with the pull request, many
of us need this feature :)

~~~
alfanick
that's exactly what I implemented, yup I will make a pull request soon

------
redwards510
When VS Code was first released, I was ecstatic at the idea of a cross-
platform lightweight code editor backed by the weight of the Visual Studio
brand. I wanted to move into the vim/sublime style of coding, but just
couldn't get used to them despite my efforts. I was also a bit anxious that
VSCode might be a bit of a publicity stunt; a way to say "See, microsoft can
do cross-platform" but poorly maintained and poorly funded.

I'm happy to see it is plowing ahead steadily to a best-in-class IDE! Every
time I open it, there is a new point update[1]. The documentation and
tutorials are thankfully kept up to date. Out of the box it is an amazing
Node.js editor and debugger. It has greatly helped me develop my Javascript
skills and eased a lot of the pain I had with the lack of intellisense in that
language (.net dev here). If the vision for the app was "lets create Visual
Studio: Millennial Edition" I'd say: target destroyed. Whoever is in charge
certainly _has_ a vision, because this sort of app could easily get wrecked by
going in too many directions at once. Keep up the great work and keep on that
strategy of not listening to every single person's input ;)

[1] By that I mean I have it installed on mac/linux/win so when I open it on
various computers, it usually has an update waiting. Not that I've ran it six
times.

------
thatswrong0
I switched from Atom recently and have very few complaints. One of them was
the (lack of) icons in the sidebar.. the new Seti icon theme is a great
addition.

Ooh and they supposedly made Cmd-P searching ('Quick Open') faster. My other
main complaint!

Edit: Yep it's faster. I used to wait a second or two for the desired results
to pop up, now they're close to instant.

~~~
mrspeaker
I don't hold allegiances to a text editor (c'mon, it just edits text!) so I
switched from Atom for a while too: I was very impressed with it (it feels so
snappy, and looks so cool!). It fell over on linting some of the ES7/8 things
that we use in our code base - but as soon as they fix that I will give it
another serious go.

~~~
dotch
I had the same complaints and just went with the excellent ESLint plugin with
a ES2016/17 friendly config instead of the default vscode linting.

~~~
tracker1
Agreed, it would be nice if the eslint module swallowed javascript linting
errors for you... Also, would be cool if it defaulted to using an in-module
copy of eslint with the airbnb preset as it's default if no eslint config file
is found in the project/workbench.

~~~
thatswrong0
IMO the Airbnb preset is too extreme / opinionated to use as a default ESLint
config. Maybe something a bit more trimmed down would be reasonable.

~~~
arvinsim
The beauty of ESLint is that you can override it with your own settings. So
you can use the AirBnB setting as the base and override the things that you
want.

~~~
thatswrong0
I know that, but I still think it's way too opinionated to be a base. My
linter shouldn't annoy me by forcing me to do things that make my code less
legible (like enforcing arrow-body-style) out of the box.

------
j79
Just beating a dead horse here, but I really wish Microsoft would add "hot
exit" for unsaved files. It's been in Sublime Text since 2011. Nearly all my
Mac apps support this feature natively. Why, in 2016, if VS Code crashes, do I
lose all my unsaved files. Especially when I want to treat an instance as
merely a scratch pad for ideas.

Supposedly it's Under Review _. Hopefully, the next release has it.

_[https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/293070-visual-
stud...](https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/293070-visual-studio-
code/suggestions/7756146-auto-save-temporary-files)

~~~
Tyriar
Several people on the vscode team (including myself) miss this feature so I'm
sure it will come eventually. Also we deprecated user voice recently, the
issue is now tracked in
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/101](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/101)

~~~
j79
Oh man, reading your comment made me super excited. Hopefully "eventually"
will be of the sooner variety ;) Joking aside, thank you for this comment, and
also your contributions to a great piece of software!

------
carussell
It's unfortunate to see that the group who named their extension "Vim" is
being recognized as more or less the official recommendation for Vim
emulation, despite being not so good. The last time that I did a survey of
feature completeness, performance, and code quality, the author of the amVim
extension had a much better showing across the board--and more active
involvement in VSCode extension APIs themselves. Perception and naming do
matter.

~~~
zerr
Why would you use VS Code (even with vim keybindings) over vim? Is there
something you can't do in vim but can in VS Code?

~~~
lucastheisen
I have as yet been unable to get the code completion working. Were you able
to?

~~~
redwards510
If you mean IntelliSense in VS Code, I just got this figured out today! The
official docs will walk you through it[1]. Be careful about reading blogs
about how to do it, the process has changed from when you used to use "tsd".
You need to click the little green light bulb at the bottom right of the
editor to create a jsconfig.json file. Then install the typings module with:
npm install -g typings

then install the language files you want. This will install node completion:
typings install dt~node --global

Much easier than before!

[1] [https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/runtimes/nodejs#_great-
co...](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/runtimes/nodejs#_great-code-editing-
experiences)

------
tga
I am worried about a lot of common functionality in VSCode/Atom, from keyboard
bindings to support for more languages, being implemented by 3rd party
plugins. They are updated independently, without verification, and have full
code execution and network access (and things like independent telemetry).

Am I alone in this? Are there security features that I'm missing to guarantee
that my code editor isn't leaking information in 20 different directions?

~~~
orbitingpluto
I noticed in the privacy instructions that MS gives a setting to disable
telemetry, but only on per project. So every time you open up a new project,
it will be reporting on you until you (remember to) disable it.

------
ralusek
I love VS Code, but I'm getting a little disheartened after bringing this up
almost every release. Is there a plan to improve the syntax highlighting? I
know there are custom themes, etc, but they all seem to have the same elements
available to them.

The JS syntax highlighting can't distinguish between properties and variables,
or properties that are functions, or object literal keys. It's almost there,
but it's lacking enough to actually be quite bothersome, with no progress so
far that I can tell.

~~~
Tyriar
We packaged up Atom's JavaScript grammar into an extension which is probably
just what you're looking for
[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-
vscod...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.js-
atom-grammar)

~~~
qarioz
That's exactly the problem. Atom, sublime, and vs code use TextMate's syntax
parsing engine
[https://manual.macromates.com/en/language_grammars](https://manual.macromates.com/en/language_grammars)

But the implementation is different. You could just copy the .plist or the
.tmLanguage file, but it's useless if it's not implemented or different on vs
code.

------
k__
Do they color changed files in the sidebar now or do I still have to switch to
the version control view?

edit: serious question, I like the coloring of changed/new files in Atom.

~~~
out_of_protocol
No love so far

------
to3m
This package suffers from what I like to call the paper.pdf problem - very
different files, rather uselessly (although not entirely illogically) given
identical file names:

    
    
        ~/Downloads % md5 VSCode*
        MD5 (VSCode-darwin-stable(1).zip) = b33b479ffa87052d05ed0141e64ad8a8
        MD5 (VSCode-darwin-stable.zip) = 86f129fe0d75c195370da4b46814389c
        ~/Downloads % ls -l VSCode*.zip
        -rw-r--r--@ 1 tom  staff  49908098  8 Sep 23:04 VSCode-darwin-stable(1).zip
        -rwxrwxrwx  1 tom  staff  43345974  1 Apr 01:56 VSCode-darwin-stable.zip*

~~~
benmarten
what do you mean, can you explain? isn't that correct behavior if you rename
the file?

~~~
to3m
In April I downloaded VSCode version 1.something, or whatever, and got VSCode-
darwin-stable.zip. And now, today, I download VSCode version 1.5, and get...
VSCode-darwin-stable.zip. Two files with the same name. Of course, Firefox
renames them, so it's not like the older one got overwritten, but that extra
little "(1)" isn't actually telling me much.

This made me think of all the times I've downloaded this or that paper from
somebody's website, and I've ended up downloading a(nother) file called
"paper.pdf"... though, just to annoy me, now that I actually try to make the
point, at the moment my downloads folder has exactly 0 files called
paper.pdf...

~~~
Tyriar
We recently improved this for Linux, the latest .rpm package for example is
now named code-1.5.1-1473370243.el7.x86_64.rpm. This is a good suggestion, I
created an issue :)
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/11722](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/11722)

------
RedCrowbar
Worth mentioning that in this release TextMate Python bundle was replaced with
MagicPython [1] for much improved Python code tokenization. [2]

[1]
[https://github.com/MagicStack/MagicPython](https://github.com/MagicStack/MagicPython)
[2]
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/commit/f4967722fa02471da...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/commit/f4967722fa02471da771f8f5386daf4b2662fe27)

~~~
kim0
Do I need to do anything to be upgraded to magic python? Thanks!

~~~
RedCrowbar
No, it's on by default in v1.5.

------
akvar
Superbly fast. And the extensions make it even more lovable. Very happy to
have moved to VSCode from Sublime.

------
Analemma_
"Update All Extensions" Nice! It was a huge PITA before to close and reopen
the editor once for every extension that had to be updated. One of my last big
gripes about VSC, gone.

~~~
joaomoreno
There's also an `extensions.autoUpdate` which lets you not worry about it
again.

~~~
JBReefer
awesome, thanks for the tip

------
spleeder
I love how VS Code has no problem working with large and even minified files
(unlike some other “modern” editors). Every update is just icing on the cake.

Keep up the good work!

~~~
Yhippa
> minified files

Did not know this. Are you telling me it un-minifies it to make it a bit more
readable?

~~~
bdcravens
No, but it doesn't choke like other editors do.

------
Nemcue
I too switched to VSC from Atom recently, mostly due to the TypeScript-support
being vastly superior in terms of both stability and speed.

Really, really wish they would focus on providing a proper crashlog. Right now
I'm getting intermittent crashes with no way of reproducing it, nor a good way
of providing feedback to the team.

------
drewrv
I've been using VS Code for a couple months now to do django development. This
is a welcome update as the file explorer being hard to read was my only real
complaint.

------
plexicle
Opening a newly cloned Chromium repository in ~3s is very impressive to be
honest.

~~~
JonnieCache
I was about to try one of these fancy new browser based editors again, but now
I'm confused. Shouldn't opening a directory be O(1)? I just opened the
chromium trunk in sublime and it took 0.2 seconds, regardless of whether it
was currently running or not.

Why would one ever use a text editor that has perceptible latency when doing
everyday tasks?

3 seconds isn't even latency, it's a freeze tbh.

~~~
mxvzr
I feel we are comparing apple to oranges here: sublime (a text editor) will
simply list files & directories in the top level folder when you add a folder
to the projects while an IDE (thinking mostly of Eclipse here, but I assume
other IDEs aren't that different) will parse every single file to build ASTs,
symbol lookup tables and all these things that you either love or cannot
stand.

~~~
wbond
With ST3 we scan and index symbols in each file contained in folders that have
been opened. This powers our project-wide Goto Symbol functionality and the
Symbol Definition popup.

------
Hydraulix989
Anybody know how well VS Code works for C++?

I really don't like how limited Sublime's linting/static analysis options are.

~~~
redwards510
I tried to get C++ working in vscode but ran into trouble getting it to debug
with gdb. I was looking for a smooth "hit f5 to compile and run (with
breakpoints)" experience like I am used to with VS, but unfortunately there
are no tutorials I could find on making that happen. The C++ extension is
available, but I can't figure out what exactly it does or how to use it. It
suffers from that common problem where they give you a config file, but don't
tell you the possible options. There is an opportunity for a good blog post
here if someone out there knows how to do this!

~~~
W0lf
This may be due to a bug I've filed a few days ago:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-
cpptools/issues/191#issu...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-
cpptools/issues/191#issuecomment-245375323) Unfortunately, it seems that the
fix hasn't been landed on this release yet.

------
dchuk
Anyone use VS Code for Ruby/Rails? Equal or better than Atom/Sublime? I
switched from sublime to atom recently but atom is slow (I know I know) and VS
Code seems well regarded so willing to give it a try.

~~~
claudiug
no autocomplete. c#, javascript, even python autocomplete is really amazing

~~~
dchuk
Do you know if there are extensions that could bring autocomplete for ruby?

~~~
Delmania
[https://github.com/rubyide/vscode-ruby](https://github.com/rubyide/vscode-
ruby)

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rebornix...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rebornix.Ruby)

~~~
dchuk
For some reason I can't reply to the child comment...

I tried using rubymine for a bit as well, but I could never get it to not be
slow as hell (I'm on a 2015 mbp with 16gb of ram). Tried tuning the settings a
bit, turned on the fast typing config thing, still really laggy.

The one thing I was thinking was that I was also developing in a docker setup,
so maybe file access was interfering or something? I haven't run a test
outside of docker, so can't really verify and have moved past rubymine for
now.

------
sethammons
Love vs code for Go. I dropped sublime immediately.

~~~
Rapzid
For some reason, for me, I have to save to get syntax highlighting and errors.
Then, I have to save again to clear them. Is this just me?

~~~
sethammons
I have to save to get go fmt to run, but I get colors and many most errors as
I type. How odd. You could reach out to the extension's team, I hear they are
responsive.

~~~
Rapzid
That didn't come out quite right; I meant syntax errors. I will check with the
extension team.

------
maxsilver
I love the updates the VSC team has been putting out, and I know this is
related to Electron issues, but I _really_ wish they would add High DPI
support.

Without it, this weird situation exists where Microsoft's Visual Studio Code
looks really blurry on Microsoft's Surface Pro, because Microsoft Software
isn't using Microsoft's API.

~~~
clappski
Ive always wondered why they don't break the text editor from Visual Studio
out into a native lightweight editor. If they did that I would switch from
Notepad++ for my text file editing on Windows.

However, even if there was a native VSCode for Linux it wouldn't tear me away
from Emacs.

------
romanovcode
I just want to say big thank you to the authors! This editor is my favorite.

------
tracker1
Grrr... seeing some issues since 1.5 wrt corporate proxy and ssl signing.

~~~
tjalex
Same; can't load any extensions. Issue has been posted:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/11702](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/11702)

------
mjs
Interesting, just received a 1.5.1 update. I wonder what happened to result in
such a quick release. (Nothing in the release notes.)

~~~
Rodeoclash
Looks like it's mentioned in the article now:

"To fix an issue when the editor.fontSize is set to 0, we're releasing a 1.5.1
recovery build."

------
out_of_protocol
Anti-dupe rules are too tight - redirected me to 1.4 discussion (opened a
while ago) due to non-unique url

~~~
hexis
This looks like a reasonable and unique URL for this story -
[https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_5](https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_5)

~~~
AdamTReineke
@dang (or mods) - Could the URL for the story be updated to this one?

------
santaclaus
Can we get out of the box spell checking? The spell check plugins I've tried
are all hella buggy...

------
mamcx
I still confused in how bad is the F# support. I try several times
[http://ionide.io/](http://ionide.io/) but all deman a NON-EXPLAINED setup
that also is complicated. I wish it work asap just installing the extension.

------
Corrado
Oh, I really like the Seti File icon themes. Sure, it's a small thing but I
think it will really help with quickly recognizing file types, which can help
indicate things like which folder you are in (is it full of C# files?).

------
alexkavon
I find it interesting that this software isn't designed with Xamarin for all
platforms, but instead uses Electron. I mean I get it, the cross platform
libraries are better in Electron, but it side steps their current cross
platform initiative.

~~~
Touche
Xamarin doesn't support the platform the editor was originally written for:
the web.

~~~
RussianCow
Not super relevant to the topic, but what's with Xamarin not supporting what
is arguably the most important platform? This seems like a huge weakness,
especially when you can now build a React app that renders natively on web and
mobile thanks to React Native.

~~~
labrador
My impression is that Xamarin is designed to suck dollars out of corporate
enterprise users who need to do something with mobile devices and can pay big
bucks for Xamarin because it allows their C# devs to make a mobile app in
short order. It saves them in the long run.

~~~
mosen
Isn't Xamarin free now?

~~~
labrador
They have a community edition but sell a corporate version with Xamarin Studio
& SDK (not in community edition) for an unspecified price. It used to be
$1,000 per developer.

~~~
mosen
Thanks!

------
mark_l_watson
Congratulations on the release. I used VSC for a Typescript class.

While VSC, JetBrains IDEs, etc. are very nice, I have been going back to my
late 1970s roots and been enjoying Emacs. Great language support for Haskell,
lisps, etc. And very responsive.

------
kinkdr
Coming from Atom, and its indentation problems, it is pure pleasure to use
VSC.

------
AlexMax
Have they added the ability for projects to have more than one root folder
yet?

~~~
Gee19
Nope :(

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/396](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/396)

------
hmsync
In fact Netbeans is very good at JavaScript and web page edit, it has the most
intelligent autocomplete and refactoring I ever seen, it is also free and open
source.

------
davidmurdoch
This is great. And crazy fast. Great work VS Code team!

------
ausjke
I wish visual studio code can bring in typings automatically based on
different filetypes, or at least get those popular ones ready-to-go.

~~~
JBReefer
? You mean like detect .py files as Python? It does that already.

~~~
ausjke
yes for syntax highlight it detects correctly, but for intellisense you have
to install those dt~ files manually which is what I meant.

------
mentos
Anyone use VS code for Unreal Engine 4 development? Long shot but figured I'd
ask.

~~~
jensvdh
It's great for Unity. Not sure about Unreal 4

------
ZanyProgrammer
I'm still holding out for Visual Studio for Mac.APP, not crummy Xamarin or a
glorified text editor.

~~~
Analemma_
What would full Visual Studio get you that VSC does not? IMO, the main
awesomesauce of VS, and its advantages over other IDEs and editors, are

1\. The first-in-class debugger

2\. Intellisense

3\. Really good support for Windows-specific technologies like Win32 and COM

VSC has 1 and 2 either now, or on its roadmap. As for 3, why do you want to
develop for Windows on a Mac? I guess I don't understand what you need that
VSC isn't already giving you, or planning to.

~~~
duaneb
Refactoring. Does that come with Intellisense? I've found that even 'rename
this symbol' is extremely hard to find support for even in static languages.

~~~
Analemma_
It does, but it requires support from language services so it's language
dependent (just because a language has syntax highlighting, it may not
necessarily have 'rename symbol' support)

