I remember when the FSF had dire warnings about using the Sun JDK. I ignored it and kept on using Java, and nothing bad happened. The JDK was eventually GPLed, and by then I decided I didn't like Java anymore and moved on to better languages anyway.<p>I feel kind of the same about VS Code. Binary product? Telemetry? Centralized marketplace? Some plugins are closed source? Eh, whatever. That stuff doesn't get in my way and I suspect that nothing particularly bad will happen to developers. Someday a better IDE will become popular, perhaps built on some of the code and standards spun off by VS Code (like the language server protocol), perhaps not. This editor will do until that happens.<p>The politics isn't as good as I'd like, but often the politics never actually materializes as a bad user experience, despite the complaints.
I had to use VS Code it briefly for a class, and was kind of shocked by the telemetry stuff, and that it's just ignore-accepted by both the students and the instructors.<p>But what turned me off more was this janky feeling around the whole application, something I don't remember experiencing in many other Microsoft tools, such as VB. It feels like it was designed from the code up rather than from the interface down, and everything I do feels like I'm accommodating the program rather than the other way around.<p>Anyway, the author of this article was right, I still did have it installed in my dev environment, left behind from those classes. I decided to use this opportunity to `pacman --remove code`.<p>The situation with bad application behaviors being "baked into the code" and propagating to all the "free" distributions is very sad, similar to what's happening with both Chrome and Firefox.<p>For example, HSTS is now baked into the all the standard distributions and there's absolutely no way (that I've found) to turn it off. I understand the "security" reasons behind it for regular users, but as someone mindful and often completely unable to access a website only because their certificate has expired, I am quite miffed.
This is a good summary of the playing field, but I think they're way overblowing the panic<p>In summary Microsoft has:<p>- Made an incredibly good web-based code editor which is 100% OSS, no strings attached<p>- Made an extensions repository and a bunch of really high quality first-party extensions that have restricted licenses<p>Sure, in a perfect world the whole thing would be fully OSS. But in the worst-case, where people some day decide they want to fork or whatever, we're still much better off than before VSCode. The editor project is a net gain, even if forking means building some of the other bits yourself. This is still a net <i>increase</i> in value for everyone- even if you exclude the restricted parts; not a decrease, much less an apocalypse.
I was reading [this](<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27687450" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27687450</a>) yesterday, and somebody said something to the effect that we should trust Microsoft, because they've turned around on OpenSource. That we should judge them by their "years now" actions, instead of the past.<p>I tried to formulate a response to this which explained why we couldn't trust them, and it was all a slow-burn ruse, but gave up. This article explains my feelings well though, especially this part:<p>> Visual Studio Code is a ramp to move the developer tooling ecosystem towards an end-to-end consumable services model of software development tools, and GitHub Codespaces is a white label of an existing service called Visual Studio Online aka Microsoft Dev Box aka Microsoft Azure DevTest Labs<p>That perfectly explains what I've been feeling is coming. Yes, they're playing "nice" now, but it's only so they're allowed through the door. The old model of "embrace, extend, extinguish" has run dry, so now it's "embrace, extend, subscribe".
I don't really understand this post. I'm a supporter of open source and free software and I can also understand wanting to avoid vendor lock-in. However I don't understand how this is Microsoft's fault for building closed source tooling. I'm upset with Microsoft's hypocritical stance on .NET and C# being open source without all tooling being open source as well but when it comes to useful tooling like Codespaces, Pylance, or the Java debugger in VSCode I don't see why Microsoft should be blamed them being closed source. Microsoft came into the Java and Python space and made tooling that is being accepted by developers.<p>The author does touch on why companies like Microsoft are able to succeed against open source software. It's because they have the money to pay their own developers to make good software.<p>Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft but not under DevDiv or Azure.
Personally, I wouldn't actually care if Visual Studio Code was completely proprietary with zero open source element. I think the imagined consequences tend to mostly be not that significant for the vast majority of people, at most it would be a blip in the timeline as people switch to something else. The actual consequence (as implied by this article) seems to be people who build their business around these tools, they are entering a particular ecosystem backed by a large corporate and they are leveraging on the big corporates ability to make that ecosystem popular. That kind of is what it is. Pros and Cons.
Even developers are taken for a ride. Just like WhatsApp and Chrome, it all comes down to ripple effects of "If others didn't use it, I can't". I have given a number of examples of this stubborn sticky monopoly below.<p>Every newbie while learning to code: scared of reviews on internet like "I couldn't get help with this editor online or with colleagues and I can't risk being stuck on this project so I switched to VS Code"<p>Every newbie while interviewing: impress interviewers even by a little chance that they use the "industry standard" tool to code.<p>Every experienced developer, even on this HN post, says "It doesn't have excellent support like VS CODE, in remote development, centralized marketplace, etc."<p>I have pieced together and my conclusion comes from the observation below. There is a reason enterprise, rather than startup world use M$ products. The power and money to fight for fairness.<p>Their C#/.NET compiler is open source and excellently designed but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like closed source]<p>VSCODE is open source but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like telemetry and extensions where the real power lies, being closed source]<p>Phone and App market but to with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ it is going to be based on android like Edge on Chromium]<p>VStudio is best IDE but to with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like telemetry + closed source extensions + Heavy + slow + whatnot!]<p>MAUI is Wowza! tool with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like repackage old Xamarin in new branding]<p>OneNote is the best note taking app ever but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like lock in using obscure format and closed source]<p>Every company they acquire but with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ Embraaace Exteeend Extin...]
"The move affects millions of developers, as the Python extension is by far the most popular tool in the VS Code Marketplace"<p>One of the reasons to use Emacs is to avoid asking Microsoft for permission to code.
one of the most "game of thrones" moves ever is the Julia Liuson promotion for DevDiv. i'm just a rando outsider so I have no context at all (in particular i dont wanna discount Julia's achievements), but just from the outside Nat seemed to be set to run devdiv and potentially be future Microsoft CEO .<p>I respect that that is a very different job than probably what Nat wanted anyway. Just seemed like the rare "tech exec who 1000% gets developers" that you'd hope takes over Microsoft after Satya.
I understand Visual Studio Code as a sophisticated Language Server Protocol frontend, and it generally does a good job at that. The IDE of the future will have Jetbrains grade UX with a heavy emphasis on LSP interfaces that "just work", rather than requiring some investigation about what setting needs to be set to which value and why basic stuff breaks mysteriously.
Meanwhile Google and Facebook internally use VS Code based IDEs as their official developer tooling. Pretty sure their legal teams have considered any legal risks with licensing.
Microsoft can’t seem to kick the old Microsoft no matter how hard they try. They embraced, extended, and now are extinguishing with the python extension.
Good article. The author makes a compelling case about how Microsoft’s strategy isn’t on the up and up. I was never convinced that telemetry was inherently evil, but I do see the downsides of non-OSS language servers.<p>I have only one request of the author and others - please stop citing TIOBE (<a href="https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/stop-citing-tiobe/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/stop-citing-tiobe/</a>)
The article is alarmist at best.<p>But it does point out one critical point: if you start using the whole ecosystem because of convenience, you may end up reliying on MS Codespace, and therefore lock yourself in.<p>The solution seems simple to me: don't put your entire stack in codespace. Make sure you can easily use your whole stack on your own computer, and migrate easily.
This is rather scary and disheartening. I finally switched from 12+ years of Eclipse to vscode just last year. After a disproportionate amount of hand wringing and testing. I'd rather move houses twice before moving to a new IDE. But it's true that since running VSCode I feel less like I actually own my environment. I would never rent an IDE or do my work in the cloud, just on basic principle. I really like VS now that I've wrangled it, though, and I'm hoping to not have to bail and find a new platform in the next 10 years or so.
Microsoft created VSCode and other company's want create a paid saas, but can't easily doing this without have own LSP extensions and marketplace?<p>Seems legit to me.
<i>...Microsoft in true Microsoft form of moving ever so slowly and doing it over a generation of people as not to spook them has been transitioning their customer base into consumers of services offered by Microsoft.</i><p>A company like Microsoft is changing the software industry by moving developers to a SaaS model, and articles like this suggest this is a terrible thing because we're losing control over what we do, they're is mining all our data, and locking us in to their platform.<p>There's an amusing irony that articles like this get posted to HN. This is the <i>exact</i> strategy that we would celebrate any HN startup for cleverly 'disrupting' any other industry - when someone launches a startup to make farming or shipping more efficient through killing off old paper based work flows, improving SaaS tools, giving customers insights through ML over millions of pieces of data, and also quietly sells those insights to boost revenue and locking customers in by making it hard to export their data, HN <i>loves</i> that. Do it in the software industry though and the comments are a lot less positive.
Holy hell, this blog is virtually unreadable. Article content aside, the fact that after pretty much every single paragraph there's 1-2 giant links to some other article and/or an ad is just infurianting and makes it impossible to focus. I stopped reading after the first few and will be adding this site to my blocklist.
This is what happens when you build software on another company's platform. Why put your time making plugins for VS Code when rug can be pulled from under any time?
Here's $0.00. Take it, and buy yourself a real editor. Anything you choose to pay above that goes to needy children in Uganda.<p>corrected per <i>systemvoltage</i>:<p><a href="https://www.vim.org/sources.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.vim.org/sources.php</a>
As far as I understand, it's not a big deal as this is sort of the dumb end of the IDE- just the text editor part, not the compiler or debugger. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know why anyone would bother using a microsoft text editor on linux, but if you are using windows you're already getting screwed pretty hard with telemetry<p>If a windows-using colleague asks me what text editor to use, I just tell them to use notepad++ or geany. The hard part is moving them away from MSVSC++ to some command-line compiler or debugger (like msys/mingw) so they can make reliable/extensible build scripts.
.NET is 20 years old now, according to Wikipedia. I've never seen the point of it, and have avoided using it in anything I've cared about. If people are foolish enough to use it, I'm not going to be able to stop them.<p>I've tried Visual Studio (to compile my forth project with), but it just doesn't work for me anyway. There's too big an impedance mismatch.<p>I'll stick with NotePad++ for non-pascal stuff, and Lazarus for the rest.