Visual Studio Code

Visual studio code, the new editor from MSFT.

I’ve made the switch to Visual Studio Code about 4 months ago and have loved it so far. But it is missing some very key features to become my daily driver. Let me dive a bit more into it.

The Good

This editor is honestly like github’s Atom editor with support for more languages, and a few nice goodies like Intellesense. Honestly looking at it as much as possible it is totally possible that it is a straight fork of Atom fixed up by the visual studio team.

The Highlights

• Intellisense
• Support for .Net languages including PowerShell
• Cross Platform
• Very active and public development
• Built in Git support
• Lots of syntax highlighting for lots of langages
• Something similar to Solutions or Projects using the “Open Folder” feature and config files
• Rolling release
• Easy configs based in JSON
• Easy no touch auto updater similar to chrome.

All of the features are very solid and the editor itself is solid, overall this is a fairly robust editor and a great start, but this start is missing some very key things that is promised down the line.

The Missing

The biggest thing that is missing is code folding. The lack of code flolding sucks hard core since I have got used to using it in large code bases, it is promised and targeted and apparently an item on the internal sprint log from what they have said but each release that comes out without it breaks my heart just a little bit. I really wish they would get it out. Now to a more minor extent what they have on their backlog that is second on my list honestly is plugin support. With both of those this would easily replace sublime text on my windows machines, and become my main editor for PowerShell stuff on my non windows machines, with out them it is still a bit second rate.

Overall…

I am going to say is this is super super promising and with a but more spit and polish it can easily become one of my main editors. Some big things on my wish list would be plugins and code folding as well as something similar to ORG mode from EMACS. If you want to snag it to test drive it for yourself you can get it from https://code.visualstudio.com/.