
Visual Studio Code Will Replace Visual Studio - pdeva1
https://movingfulcrum.com/visual-studio-code-will-replace-visual-studio/
======
recursive
I haven't tried to do any serious .net debugging in vs code, but I'd be
shocked if it has capabilities anywhere near vs. Heap snapshots, garbage
collection stats, attach-to-process, click to evaluate enumerable in watch,
first chance exceptions, break in "just my code" off the top of my head.

~~~
pitaj
It already has attach-to-process and just-my-code.

------
xor_null
VS has alot of stuff which is missing in Code, so Code has of course new shiny
features every release. I mean just the XAML development is missing (as far as
i know). That was also the point why they released VS Community, to allow
Independent developers to develop for there UWP Platform. Also MS uses VS in
several other Products, like sql management studio (they releases a cross
platform tool lately), or Blender. Both are just VS with a bunch of other
Plugin/Projekt Templates. I also know some Companys who uses VS Shell - a
striped down Visual Studio - for there own internal software.

Also, if i'm not wrong, VSCode is electron based app. If VSCode will have the
same amount of fearures as VS, i think they will have Performance and Memory
issues. Just a few weeks ago they published a blog post, how they improved the
performance of the editor for large files (fun fact, Atom had the same problem
and they solved it by implementing a native Textbuffer, no JS). So adding new
features to VSCode will bring new challenges to performance and memory
consumption. And don't forget, there are people out there complaining about
why the slack app needs so much memory....

So all in all, yes maybe Vscode will replace VS but this is a really long road
to go.

------
Analemma_
John Gruber has a theory about why Apple will never completely eliminate macOS
and go iPad-only: "The Mac being heavy allows iOS to be light". That is, iOS
can be free of a bunch all the cruft that comes with the long history of
desktop operating systems because the Mac has that for the people who need
those scenarios.

I think there's a similar dynamic at work here: full Visual Studio has a lot
of powerful capabilities that are only used by 1% of its userbase, but each
person needs a different 1%, and much of it is legacy Windows stuff. VS will
continue to bear the burden of having all that so that VSCode can continue to
be reasonably lightweight and updated quickly.

------
mcbutterbunz
VS Code is great but will never replace Visual Studio. They are different
beasts. I could see the two gravitating towards each other but I never see the
one winning outright. There are a vast spectrum of developers out and its okay
that there is no single IDE that fits everyone perfectly.

------
scarface74
From Microsoft why VS won't go 64 bit.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2015/12/29/revisiting...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2015/12/29/revisiting-64-bit-
ness-in-visual-studio-and-elsewhere/)

Then his own rebuttal to himself...

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2016/01/04/64-bit-
vis...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2016/01/04/64-bit-visual-
studio-the-pro-64-argument/)

~~~
megaman22
They desperately need to. It is absurd for VS to be thrashing disk so much
when it starts touching 2 GB of RAM usage, when I have 32 GB sitting mostly
unused on my workstation.

As JetBrains Rider 64-bit becomes more mature, it's harder not to switch.

~~~
pjmlp
3rd party options outside official platform tooling are always a bad option in
the long run.

They never move beyond being a 2nd class citizen with their own set of issues
and development problems.

~~~
scarface74
It's an IDE. Every language for every platform has different IDEs that people
prefer.

~~~
pjmlp
It is a _3rd party IDE_ , less capable and will always be catching up with the
official language vendor IDE features.

~~~
scarface74
If anything, Visual Studio is trying to catch up with Visual Studio +
Resharper made by the same people who make Rider.

Which first party IDE do users of Python, Java, Go, Node, etc. use?

~~~
pjmlp
> If anything, Visual Studio is trying to catch up with Visual Studio +
> Resharper made by the same people who make Rider.

I never needed to use Resharper.

Resharper might offer better refactoring tooling, but it doesn't offer
anything else over what it means a full Visual Studio experience.

> Which first party IDE do users of Python, Java, Go, Node, etc. use?

I though we were speaking about .NET here, and other languages offered by OS
vendors.

From your list only Java fits this description.

So to answer it, Java main IDE, the one pushed by Sun and used as basis for
Solaris development was Netbeans, which incidentally still has features not
offered by InteliJ and Eclipse regarding GUI designers, visual editing for Web
development and mixed debugging between managed and native code, including
directly visualization of native code generated by the JIT.

Visual Studio has quite good support for Python and Node as well.

~~~
scarface74
_Resharper might offer better refactoring tooling, but it doesn 't offer
anything else over what it means a full Visual Studio experience_

R# doesn’t offer anything but better refactoring, better navigation, a better
unit testing interface, better code analysis, more shortcuts for taking care
of boilerplate code like creating an equality override for classes, better
Nugget integration (Find this type in Nuget) - ie everything a developer does
on a day to day basis...

~~~
pjmlp
R# also turns an useful PC into an airplane, increases the typing delay, does
not offer UML modelling tools, database integration, database modelling tools,
Windows Forms, WPF and UWP modelling tools, enterprise code navigation
tooling, mixed mode debugging between native and managed code, code generation
templates, GPGPU debugging, services and drivers debugging, profiling tools,
task and threading debuggers with selective control with graphical
visualization,...., what a Windows developer actually needs.

~~~
scarface74
I’m assuming you mean Rider since R# is a part of VS. But Windows Forms?
Microsoft basically abandoned that years ago. The writing is on the wall as
far as the .Net framework, MS is showing no love for classic .Net. All of
their energy is toward .Net Core. I jumped off of that train a year ago and
don’t plan to look back. I’m a big fan of Core but classic .Net?

~~~
pjmlp
Yes, Forms. It is legacy, yet loved by many enterprise customers, lots of gigs
available.

.NET Core will be relevant for our customers when it finally achieves 1:1
parity with .NET Framework features, until then not many will bother to
rewrite their applications, they already have Java for non-Windows platforms
with better libraries.

I had to port an application from .NET Framework to Java, because customer
wanted it to run on Linux and .NET Core wasn't up to it, regarding the
necessary features.

------
peapicker
Not possible due to established C/C++ Windows codebases.

------
keithnz
Visual Studio is vastly more capable than visual code. It won't be going
anywhere anytime soon

~~~
travmatt
I use vscode (primarily because I don’t have sudo rights to install visual
studio) and I’ve researched the difference between the two and have never
found a more concrete explanation of the differences than a vague “Visual
Studio focuses on the entire lifecycle of the software”.

~~~
ethbro
Summary: Visual Studio has 20 years of features. Code has 3.

Those numbers cut both ways, as programming today isn't close to what it was
20 years ago. And choices / features that seemed critical then seem archaic
now.

On the other hand, you can't instantly catch up on 20 years worth of good
ideas.

------
chrisbennet
_" No 64 bit support for Visual Studio

The very first sign was when Microsoft refused to port Visual Studio (VS) to
64 bit. "_

MS purposely chose to forego 64 bit in favor of 32 bits for performance among
other reasons.

------
slavik81
> Visual Studio was always paid software. But in 2014 MS introduced the
> Community Edition.

Visual Studio has had a free Express edition since 2005. The only difference I
ever noticed between it and the Pro version was the lack of plugin support.
They modified the license slightly and called their new free version the
Community edition, but not much has changed.

~~~
pjmlp
Community is much more than the former express versions, it is the Pro version
with another license.

~~~
slavik81
Was there something missing that was important for .Net developers? For C++,
there was practically no difference aside from the aforementioned plugin
support.

It's long been the case that businesses buy the pro version and hobbyists use
the free one. Now it's because of license restrictions rather than because of
missing features, but the end result is basically the same.

~~~
pjmlp
Yes, for starters you would need to install separately one express version per
language and workflow.

Meaning something like Express C++, Express C# Desktop, Express C# Web
development.

Then many plugins for SQL, GUI design, static code analysis, debugging were
not available.

Even C++ had language features not enabled on Express versions, and if I
recall correctly it did only 32bit code generation.

------
zamalek
I wish. The VSCode editor is years ahead of VS, but it's not happening. You
don't have to only compete with Microsoft's out-of-the-box experience, but
also VSIP - that includes Resharper (which I don't use, but it's reality).

> 64-bit

I've never experienced an out-of-memory with VS, so that whole argument is
moot.

~~~
bonoetmalo
You'll find a much different experience with OOM exceptions for developers
working on large solutions, especially ones that contain a lot of test
projects and small test assets. They've improved on it in 2017 but it's still
pretty bad, OOM full crashes multiple times a day.

~~~
zamalek
We're at 25mloc, things can be sluggish but not _broken._

~~~
bonoetmalo
I think it's less a LoC thing than it is a number of symbols/files thing. We
have some 900k+ tests with an accompanying large number of test asset files.
That means 900k public methods that test discovery has to process in realtime.

It's partially on us to move away from the antipattern of solution monoliths,
and to nugetize crap that doesn't need to actually be in the solution. But
it's also on Microsoft to lazily load projects that aren't being used.

~~~
zamalek
> on us to move away from the antipattern of solution monoliths

We started that about 6mo ago. It's worth it but good luck. Spend a lot of
time understanding your codebase. Spend more time understanding DDD (there are
great courses on Pluralsight). You're going to learn a lot and it's going to
be both rewarding and hell.

> But it's also on Microsoft to lazily load projects that aren't being used.

They have that fast solution load thing in 2017, I'm not entirely sure what it
does but maybe it's worth a shot.

------
pjmlp
It might, but only after catching up with Visual Studio features, and there is
a long path of a few decades before it ever happens.

This statement can only be said by someone that hasn't actually used Visual
Studio beyond editing text.

------
bonoetmalo
I get the impression that the author of the article hasn't used a debugging
feature any more advanced than breakpoints before. I don't want to stick up
for Visual Studio because it has so many issues, but it's an incredibly
powerful debugging tool with tight source control integration, and isn't going
away any time soon. Visual Studio Code just doesn't provide the toolset needed
by a team of 500 developers working on a monolithic software project, and it
shouldn't, that isn't what it's intended to be. It's good at what it is
already.

~~~
pdeva1
you are right sir, what could I possibly know about debuggers. I only created
this after all.. [http://chrononsystems.com/products/chronon-time-
travelling-d...](http://chrononsystems.com/products/chronon-time-travelling-
debugger)

------
jinushaun
I think you’re under the impression that VS is stagnating and VSC is active
because VSC has to catch up to 20 years of features. Even just a few months
ago VSC was missing a ton of features, but every release brings more advanced
IDE features. Only recently has it replaced Sublime Text as my default __text
__editor. That’s just simply editing text.

VSC still hasn’t replaced PyCharm for me when I want to make large scale edits
to python code.

------
IronWolve
I'm a linux user, sysadmin with very light scripting and I normally use
Sublime or VI. I tried Code out last year and been using it for all kinds of
things, markup files, python, css files.

Gotta say, Code is pretty nice for free and very multipurpose.

Kinda worried after seeing that article today that bing search cant be turned
off in Code, no idea whats thats about.

------
orionblastar
Until VSCode is as easy to use GUIlike paint your own forms etc, I remain
skeptical.

Visual Basic when it first came out, made it easy to program and create forms
and controls.

------
ggm
I'd believe it, if somebody can show me windows 10 core product which clearly
has electron inside. Or, if you can show me code pointers to 'developed in-
house, in VSC'

I am in OSX, without access to W10 so its conjecture for me.

------
userbinator
_No 64 bit support for Visual Studio_

What? I've used Visual Studio to work on 64-bit applications.

 _Thus comes in VS Code, a free, cross platform IDE that supports all modern
languages._

It's only "free" because you're paying for it in other ways than money:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Code#Data_collec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Code#Data_collection)

Quite frankly I find it disturbing --- what used to be software you paid for
and then you would be left alone to, is now "free" pseudo-SaaS that is funded
by the collection and sale of user data.

~~~
rstat1
VS itself isn't fully 64 bit. All the important bits are (like the compilers
and such) just not the main VS app.

Also they aren't very good at the collecting part if they let you just
disable, and make it known that you can, while also providing versions (the
OSS version) that don't even have the data collectors.

~~~
cup-of-tea
What kind of shoddy programming means it can't just be compiled for 64 bit?
Why would they bake the word size so deeply into a program like that?

~~~
Karliss
Last time i checked c++ debugger still used 16 bit line numbers. My attempts
to make a plugin for vs also left an impression that it contains large amount
of modules glued together using various technologies. Things like 5 layers of
c# API wrappers named api10, api20, api30 on top of some c code communicating
using COM objects. I wouldn't be surprised if they still had some third party
libraries for which they only have a binaries and vendor doesn't exist
anymore.

