
Visual Studio Code 1.8 - kentor
https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_8
======
wwalser
I recently moved from EMACS (after using it for ~10 years & ~6 languages) to
VSCode. There are loads of things that I miss but overall it's been a fairly
smooth transition.

I'm moving because I spend most of my time writing javascript and felt that no
combination of emacs modes allowed me to keep up with a proper IDE. Emacs is a
tool to learn once and use for a lifetime (and I will continue to use it for
other editing tasks) but I found that I was increasingly having to learn
outside tools in order to gain the benefit that IDEs could hand me for "free"
(free like a puppy, retraining your fingers takes months).

Things I love:

\- Intellisense is immediately superior to anything I've used in EMACS.

\- Debugging from my editor. This was available in emacs for C, PHP & Java
using GDB or similar but it never made it's way to javascript as far as I can
tell.

\- Goto definition.

\- Good typescript and Flow integration

Things I miss:

\- IDO Mode (FML I hate Finder for moving through directories)

\- Creating files with just the keyboard (probably possible but I haven't
figured it out yet).

\- Kill ring

\- Moving around the code with just a keyboard (ctrl-v and the sort).

\- Non-intellisense completion. When your caret is at the end of a word,
Command-\ in EMACS completes to another word from the same buffer that has the
same prefix and continue to swap through words on subsequent presses. Very
useful in a dynamic language.

~~~
jordache
Emacs doesn't do go to definition? Eeek

~~~
mhd
Visual Studio Code _itself_ doesn't either.

~~~
Kiro
It does for me. I haven't installed any plugins.

~~~
mhd
For any language? Doesn't work for my Perl code...

~~~
jordache
hmm at least for JS.. that for sure

------
mmanfrin
VS Code is, along with Typescript and Vue, one of my favorite things to have
entered my world in the past 6 months. They have been rapidly improving VSC
and I am exceptionally happy with it.

~~~
komali2
The debugger changed how I code. So much better than any other node debug
solutions.

~~~
miguelrochefort
I'm confused. Did javascript people not use a debugger before VS Code?

~~~
amadeusw
It was console.log() all the way

~~~
miguelrochefort
You can't be serious.

~~~
thenewwazoo
I'm not sure why not. AFAIK that's still your only option if you want to debug
NodeJS code headlessly.

~~~
miguelrochefort
What about conditional break points, call stack, time travel, watch list, live
editing, etc?

~~~
Ace17
Wow, there are actually people using any of these?

~~~
miguelrochefort
More like all of these every day?

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WhitneyLand
Why are people using this instead of WebStorm? It seems like:

\- It a little faster for Typescript (but no better TS features from what I
can see).

\- A lot of people are trying it because it's new, or because they like MS
tools.

\- It's free

On the other hand WebStorm still has more functionality overall, a few less
rough edges, and a more standard UI (some people don't like how MS Code
doesn't have a tabbed doc UI).

My personal calculus is that WebStorm is so cheap, I would not allow my
primary tool to be even 1% worse to save money. Also I like those crazy guys -
they have been pushing out features very fast for years now.

~~~
WhitneyLand
Downvotes? Would be interested to know which points were inaccurate.

~~~
plexicle
I would personally never use an IDE for any of my (non-mobile) development. No
way no how. That makes things like WebStorm or whatever DOA for me personally.

My best guess for your downvotes is that your comment isn't only nonsense and
inaccurate, but also pretty churlish.

~~~
WhitneyLand
Nonsense and churlish?

How is it mean spirited to post observations about something people were
asking about?

And if something is incorrect why not just say what it is?

------
torgoguys
Anybody know how many people are on the VSCode team? They're moving so fast in
adding useful stuff with very few hiccups...I'm lovin' it.

~~~
ggregoire
About 10.

From one member: "VSCode has a relatively small team compared to the size of
the product" \-
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/13138#issuecommen...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/13138#issuecomment-251763368)

~~~
Hydraulix989
Makes me happy that getting rid of stack ranking allows small elite teams to
now be functional.

Before, everyone would've been stepping on each others' toes because only two
out of ten people would always be rated top performers and two more would be
forced onto "performance improvement plans" (aka "you're about to get fired").

------
hackcrafter
The Just my Code debugger support, where stepping through callbacks can just
skip all the in-between functions handled by third party libs looks fantastic.

Especially with await / yield-promise type stuff, I could imagine this will
make debugging much nicer.

[0] [https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_8#_just-my-code-
nod...](https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_8#_just-my-code-node-and-
node2)

------
SwellJoe
Being able to hide the activity bar puts VSCode into a class of editors I
could imagine myself using. I tried it a couple of times in the past, and that
damned big ass bar of useless icons bugged me too much (I work on a laptop
screen 95% of the time, so giving up that much real estate for something I'd
rather do with hotkeys is just painful). It sounds silly to dismiss it over
such a small UI thing, but well...my screen is small, my eyes are getting
older (so even though I have a 4k display, I can't shrink everything down
without eye strain), and vim and Atom don't eat up the screen in the same way.
So, I use vim and Atom (mostly vim, as old habits die hard). But, will give
VSCode another try.

------
angelofm
It looks pretty good congratulations to the team.

There is an issue though that I find so annoying and I just hope they fix it.

I set up the external terminal to git bash on windows and sometimes when I'm
deleting commands with the backspace it doesn't really delete the full word,
hard to explain but as an example if I type "nani" and then press backspace
"nani" stays but I know it has been deleted because it kinda flicks so I type
"o" now I have in the terminal "nanio" and sure enough if I now type the name
of the file it edits it.

Hope this makes sense, I put up with it because I'm really enjoying the
product and the speed of development.

Big congratulations to the team.

~~~
Tyriar
I'll be looking into this for 1.9, the issue tracking this is
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/14613](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/14613)

~~~
angelofm
Thank you, I didn't feel like I could explain it properly that's why I didn't
open a issue.

You guys are fantastic

------
earthnail
I know they're working on styling, but now that the titlebar is black, too (on
Mac), I really, really would appreciate if the status bar would blend in, too.

~~~
WA
Can't upvote this enough. One dev mentioned in a GitHub issue that the blue
color is for branding reasons [1]. This is so absurd, it hurts. That status
bar is the most distracting and annoying thing ever.

See link for suggestions how to mitigate. I use the tip from the person named
sysrpl. VSCode is unusable with that blue color for me.

1:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1884](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1884)

~~~
seanmcb
We do have a plan to enable this - unfortunately it did not make 1.8 but we
plan to work on it in 1.9. So you should have some additional options soon.

Sean - VS Code Team Member

~~~
pitaj
Is it possible to add for a way for the user to have a custom CSS file? I
really like how Atom provides such great visual customization by just giving
the user a less file that they can edit.

------
americanjetset
> Terminal copy and paste key bindings on Windows have changed to Ctrl+C (when
> text is selected) and Ctrl+V respectively.

So happy.

------
ggregoire
> JavaScript improvements: IntelliSense for paths in import

Does that mean we don't need those extensions anymore?

\- Path Intellisense:
[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=christia...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=christian-
kohler.path-intellisense)

\- NPM Intellisense:
[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=christia...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=christian-
kohler.npm-intellisense)

(I have not updated yet)

~~~
mattbierner
It depends on what you need. The new built-in path intellisense only applies
to JavaScript and TypeScript files for require or import statements. The path
intellisense extension specifically is much more general and offers additional
functionality that you may find helpful.

I work on the VSCode team on JS and TS support, so please let us know if you
run into any problems with the new path intellisense feature or have ideas on
how it could be improved.

Thanks

~~~
ggregoire
Hey! I just tried the feature and I've an issue: Intellisense suggests
everything, not only paths.

e.g. if I start typing './c', it suggests me every symbol in the current file
starting with 'c'.

I would love to have only the paths available in the project (like the "Path
Intellisense" extension does).

I will post my feedback on GitHub, in case you don't see this message. :)

------
rl3
Anyone using Visual Studio Code for Rust development? If so, how is it?

[https://areweideyet.com/](https://areweideyet.com/)

Going by feature set alone (plugins included) it appears like a good choice,
though I've yet to try it myself.

~~~
lambda
I'm an Emacs user, so that's what I've written most of my Rust in, but I tried
out VSCode and setting up all of the Rust integration, and it was pretty easy
to set up and seemed to work pretty well playing with it briefly. Didn't seem
to be worth switching from Emacs for, but I was fairly impressed, and will
likely recommend VSCode for anyone looking for a Rust IDE who doesn't already
have a strongly preferred editor or IDE.

------
augb
Finally, we get hot exit. :)

~~~
berdon
+1

Now I only hope they add in hot-disk support.

Sublime Text 3 checks to see if the currently opened version differs from the
file system. If it does, it prompts the user to keep the current version or
replace it with the disk version. VS Code just replaces the current version
with the disk version and doesn't retain history so you can't undo this.

I lost about an hour of work yesterday because I had a file open in both VS
Code and Sublime Text. Pressing save in Sublime Text wiped out all changes. :(

~~~
Tyriar
FYI that's being tracked here
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/15749](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/15749)

~~~
berdon
Thanks Tyriar!

------
geostyx
I really like the improvements to the settings system. It's a lot easier to
use now while still keeping it a simple json file!

Also, I did not know how much I needed Zen mode in my life.

------
bopcrane
The pace of development on VS code is impressive! I'm really looking forward
to the JS improvements

~~~
ggregoire
Agree, this patch note is so big! Bravo to the team.

------
hannibalhorn

      JavaScript Intellisense in HTML
    

This is awesome - I was just this week looking at using Vuejs for a new
project instead of React, but the lack of Intellisense in "Single File
Components" with VSCode was a deal breaker for me, better to stay with JSX.
I've used all kinds of things before the associated tooling is really up to
par, and it's one of those things I often regret later. At least it's still
not too late to revisit the decision!

------
gremlinsinc
Still waiting on docblock support or plugin for PHP, then I'm going to give it
a shot. Till then I'll stick w/ sublime.

Though I've been trying vim again, maybe I'll finally jump into it.. I mean I
jumped into Arch linux + i3wm(tiled window manager), moving into the console
for everything seems next logical transition toward becoming part computer.

~~~
brulard
You should have separated the PHP comment with the "becoming part computer". I
would like to upvote just the latter.

~~~
gremlinsinc
is that a knock on php? it gets the job done, I also am working on some
phoenix side projects, but Laravel is my main bread and butter currently and
what I excel at. Would love to do more/become better at using elixir/haskell
in some future apps, but I only see them really mattering when I need lots of
concurrency.

------
_tjm
Has anyone been able to get decent JS Intellisense working on VS Code? I
recently switched to (and decided to pay for) WebStorm, despite the fact that
it's debugging experience is slower, because it will properly inspect my
project, automatically get the typings .tsd's for all of my node_modules and
Node core and put them somewhere out of my way (i.e. not in my project root
directory!).

I can then properly refactor my code. I can 'go to definition' and it actually
works! Also the editor automatically telling me a 'variable is unused' being
switched on by default without some plugin? This should be standard.

Having been a C++ and Java dev before this Node gig, these things were
essential for me.

This and the fact that it has lots of tools built in persuaded me to make the
switch.

I still keep an eye on the VS Code releases hoping one day I can hop back.

------
LeonidBugaev
Worth noticing that VSCode currently have the biggest ever active community on
Github
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/17125](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/17125)

Over 1500 people, monthly, contribute to the project!

------
soneca
Is VSCode a good tool for someone that is just starting to learn software
development?

My plan is to become a front-end developer. I am learning Javascript now, then
go back a little and learn more deeply CSS, then make some projects with
NodeJS and on and on.

I use Notepad++ today and it looks good enough for me. So I wanted to ask more
experienced developers: a more powerful tool at this early stage of the
learning curve help or confuse?

~~~
John23832
I don't do front end dev work, but I do use VSCode. With all the community
extension for VSCode, I would say that if it doesn't work better than
Notepad++ for you, it would at least be even.

I'd think that it would work better for you though.

------
tarr11
How do VSCode features get ported to the Monaco Code Editor[1]?

I was interested in using it but noticed the last commit for Monaco was in
October.

[1] [https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-
editor](https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor)

~~~
nojvek
the monaco editor code is part of vscode. They do a scripted copy to the
repository every now and then. Definitely file an issue if its a bit too old.

~~~
egamma
We usually update the Monaco Editor npm bits shortly after the monthly VS Code
release. So this is still on our list.

------
hkon
But I just downloaded the previous version. I am really impressed about the
speed of deliveries.

------
sorenjan
Is it possible to first open a file, and then easily open the folder that
contains the file?

------
itaysk
Amazing pace and progress between each minor version

------
hprotagonist
Excellent.

I have high hopes for a sublime-style "whole document" scroll bar in future
releases.

~~~
kej
It's in progress, see [0] this issue. Scroll to the bottom for an update from
a few days ago.

[0]
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/4865](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/4865)

~~~
hprotagonist
ah, i see a lot has happened since the last time i looked. Can't wait!

------
azmenak
I do almost 100% js dev these days, and I've been switching back and forth
between Sublime and VSCode for the past few months. The one major issue I have
with VSCode is lack of completions for strings and words which Intellisense
doesn't understand. Sublime's CodeIntel dose an excellent job of picking up
all the "words" I've used in open files and saves me a lot of typing and
typos.

Maybe there's some config I'm unaware of, since VSCode's site does mention
"words" as a type of completion, but I've never seen it work for js files.

~~~
pitaj
Can you give an example? It seems to work great for words at least in the same
file.

------
jensvdh
Fantastic update. The node debugging tools are some of the best out there.

------
lowmagnet
I use VSC for Go stuff and the extension (lead author Luke Hoban) for it is
excellent. I haven't gotten debugging working properly yet, but I so rarely
need it, it's hard to justify configuring it.

I might have to make a few actions to do it, and I'm too busy being productive
with the go toolchain tools so nicely integrated with the extension.

------
anupshinde
Hot exit is finally here. I missed this feature when I moved from SublimeText.
And very useful on desktops

------
Rapzid
I wonder how much of VS Code's community momentum over Atom is due to
TypeScript vs Coffee. Personally, I find code bases with great language
tooling easier to jump into.

------
protomyth
Is there anyway to get user-defined macros? Sublime and JEdit handle them well
and was wondering if there is something coming or a preferred extension?

~~~
mattbierner
No built-in support yet, but this new extension is worth trying
[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=geddski....](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=geddski.macros)

The vim extension
([https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevi...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim))
also supports vim macros

------
_tjm
Let us all not forget that with the move from Chrome 52 to Chrome 53, this
version of VS Code supports full-color emoji.

------
RUG3Y
I never thought that I'd like a Microsoft product again, but VSCode is really
neat and has become my editor of choice.

------
cocochanel
I switched to VS code today and I love it! Looking forward to JS improvements.
Thank you to the Microsoft team! :)

------
astrostl
I <3 VSC because it isn't a bloated IDE.

I worry that it will eventually be a bloated IDE.

------
donatj
The non-native taskbar drievs me nuts. At least I can turn it off.

------
asadm
mini-map is the only thing stopping me from jumping to VSCode.

~~~
h1d
What use does a mini map have, if you can only see the "shape" of your code?

Never used it on sublime text. Genuinely curious.

I'd use method listing which is visually more distinguishable.

------
howfun
Why all editord lately become black themed?

------
hubert123
Can it ctrl navigate to html import?

------
aivosha
is this any good for python ?

~~~
redpieintheface
I've been using it to code and debug python for a few months now, support has
been getting better and better. I'd recommend this extension for debugging and
extra bells and whistles.

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=donjayam...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=donjayamanne.python)

------
jongar_xyz
I actually find Atom more pleasant to look at.

------
azinman2
Loving the work done.. now we just need a more complete VIM mode
implementation!

------
nkg
I want to love you, VS. Your name would look so good on my resume.I'm going to
try one more time.

~~~
nojvek
I don't work on vscode directly, have contributed bug fixes and features but
if you'd like to be considered for a team inside visual studio working on web
diagnostics, please ping me.

~~~
nkg
What is "web diagnostics" about ?

~~~
nojvek
Chrome devtools equivalent of edge browser: F12 Developer tools.

------
AveryPratt
I've just started using VSCode in my python codecamp where 90% of students use
sublime. Between the integrated terminal + git, intellisense, and debugger, my
proficiency has gone up considerably since I made the switch.

