Microsoft: doing things right?

digitalscream

OK, this is one for the geeks...I use Ubuntu as my main OS (for work and generally faffing about...everything except Elite, really), and on a whim I installed Visual Studio Code today.

I hate myself for saying this, but...I actually quite like it. I usually use gedit for development because I like an editor rather than an IDE for coding, and VS Code seems to do everything gedit does, but slightly better. It has github integration (which is vastly better compared to gedit's git plugin - you can rebase branches, see all your changes properly etc), it has a terminal pane which supports multiple terminals (gedit only supports one), it has sensible code completion (gedit's completion is limited at best) etc etc.

In fact, the only thing it doesn't do is HAML syntax highlighting, but I can live with that even if I can't find a way to make it work.

Oh, and it's fast too.

I'm rather shocked, and more than a little confused. This is upsetting my worldview.

randella

There's a reason the .NET framework languages are some of the most commonly used in the world.  I can't speak for VS Code, but in VS Pro 2012 (the latest version I have available) the IDE is a thing of beauty.  The Intellisense, in particular, has some pretty good party tricks - once you've defined all your classes, propertybags, vars and wotnot you can literally type whole lines of code by repeatedly hammering the Enter key and banging a semicolon at the end.

digitalscream

OK, HAML support is trivial to install. In fact, so is basically anything - the extension management is excellent, far better than anything I've come across.

Colour me impressed.

randella

Yep.  This is not a personal slight by any means, but I've never understood the ubertechy 'Microsoft bad' tribe who prefer to spend hours pissing about in a CLI with drivers and batch files.  I want my job easier, not harder!

digitalscream

randella said:

Yep.  This is not a personal slight by any means, but I've never understood the ubertechy 'Microsoft bad' tribe who prefer to spend hours pissing about in a CLI with drivers and batch files.  I want my job easier, not harder!

Well, I prefer not to have full Intellisense-style completion - I tend to do all my development in Ruby where you have entire DSLs for different purposes, so that kind of completion can actually hinder progress more than anything.

This, though, seems to have exactly the right balance of helpfulness vs freedom.

The git integration really is quite nice. Unlike most Linux-based tools (which tend to assume you're going to do diffs etc in a terminal), when you show the git side-pane and click one of the files listed as changed, it immediately splits the code pane and shows you the diffs side-by-side. It's just...sensible.

monquixote

I've been using VS Code for a while, it's a superb app though MS can't have all of the credit as it is heavily based on Atom.

Another cool thing is that the whole thing is built using HTML and Javascript.
The Electron framework which they use to build it is awesome for building desktop apps with web technology (the recent Vivaldi browser is built with it too)

I've been using it as an IDE for NodeJS and Go and it's great. 

digitalscream

Well, in that case I'm glad it's not just me.

I'm having trouble getting over these things, though:

1 - Microsoft have made a good editor which isn't exclusively designed for their languages
2 - They've properly open-sourced it
3 - They've released it for OS X and Linux
4 - It's actually really good

I guess that now they're not hitting the headlines as the bad guys any more, they don't feel so much pressure to play up to the image...

Jalapeno

Apparently they're open-sourcing PowerShell as well, and creating OSX & Linux installs.

monquixote

digitalscream said:

Well, in that case I'm glad it's not just me.

I'm having trouble getting over these things, though:

1 - Microsoft have made a good editor which isn't exclusively designed for their languages
2 - They've properly open-sourced it
3 - They've released it for OS X and Linux
4 - It's actually really good

I guess that now they're not hitting the headlines as the bad guys any more, they don't feel so much pressure to play up to the image...

There is a lot more where that comes from.

NodeJS (the bits that aren't V8) is built on LibUV which was built by .... Microsoft!

We're using RXJava for our Android apps which adds support for functional reactive programming into Android which was built by ... Microsoft!

The next version of Win10 will include support for Bash and Powershell is being made available for Linux so that it's easier for cross platform administration

Microsoft are doing some really great stuff now. 

randella

Fair enough, I guess in .NET you tend to pick your language and go for it. I've never had a stab at Ruby, I seem to have been fully indoctrinated into the Microsoft machine.  One day.

VS really has improved immeasurably since ver. 6 which could be a teeth-gnashing pain in the arse.  Like you said, everything seems sensible and it rarely (I find) gets its knickers twisted trying to force you down any particular route.  The NuGet Package Manager works very well indeed, it's a godsend when you're trying to corral half a dozen bits of scripting framework and the latest version of various MS tools. 

If you've gone fully native and use SQL Server, the Entity First stuff in MVC5 is great too, bash out your objects and presto, matching database.  Although that one can get itself in an unsynched mess if you don't keep an eye on it resulting in some proper mouse-slamming temper tantrums so all is not perfect.

Edit - oops, this was in reply to @digitalscream but the posts flew in thick and fast while I was typing!

digitalscream

randella said:

Fair enough, I guess in .NET you tend to pick your language and go for it. I've never had a stab at Ruby, I seem to have been fully indoctrinated into the Microsoft machine.  One day.

Oddly, it was a day spent swearing at an early version of ASP.NET that made me throw my toys out of the cot and install Rails 0.8. That was the last day I touched Visual Studio.

Coming from the Microsoft world, I was obsessed with the idea that I had to use an IDE, so for the next six months or so I manfully tried to struggle on with Eclipse and NetBeans. In fairness to Microsoft...whatever gripes I had with .NET, those two were immeasurably worse.

Then I discovered the joy in using a simple text editor with a file browser on the side and a terminal at the bottom.

On that note...Notepad+ has syntax highlighting support. Never knew that.

One other thing I really like about VS Code - all the settings are in a text file. No trying-to-find-what-you-want, point-and-click interface...just search the text file. Done.

PolarityMan

The full visual studio is so far ahead of anything in the OSS world it's ridiculous.the native debugger is incredible.

monquixote

I really don't see a lot of point in using an IDE in an interpreted language. 

I find IntelliJ useful for Java as the debugger is awesome.

PolarityMan

monquixote said:

digitalscream said:

Well, in that case I'm glad it's not just me.

I'm having trouble getting over these things, though:

1 - Microsoft have made a good editor which isn't exclusively designed for their languages
2 - They've properly open-sourced it
3 - They've released it for OS X and Linux
4 - It's actually really good

I guess that now they're not hitting the headlines as the bad guys any more, they don't feel so much pressure to play up to the image...

There is a lot more where that comes from.

NodeJS (the bits that aren't V8) is built on LibUV which was built by .... Microsoft!

We're using RXJava for our Android apps which adds support for functional reactive programming into Android which was built by ... Microsoft!

The next version of Win10 will include support for Bash and Powershell is being made available for Linux so that it's easier for cross platform administration

Microsoft are doing some really great stuff now. 

I head docker support is coming too.

digitalscream

PolarityMan said:

The full visual studio is so far ahead of anything in the OSS world it's ridiculous.the native debugger is incredible.

As noted, it depends on your requirements. For me, the full VS gets in the way far too much. Even the debugger - which I'll admit is good for .NET-style code - feels clunky compared to console-based debugging. To me, at least.

PolarityMan

gdb and dbx are fucking horrendous. Do you know how hard it is even to do simple things like view a vector?

monquixote

PolarityMan said:

I head docker support is coming too.

That's a smart move

digitalscream

PolarityMan said:

gdb and dbx are fucking horrendous. Do you know how hard it is even to do simple things like view a vector?

I don't know or care. Like I said...Ruby, man byebug is my friend, because it lets me stop/step/etc with an irb console.

FX_Munkee

randella said:

There's a reason the .NET framework languages are some of the most commonly used in the world.  I can't speak for VS Code, but in VS Pro 2012 (the latest version I have available) the IDE is a thing of beauty.  The Intellisense, in particular, has some pretty good party tricks - once you've defined all your classes, propertybags, vars and wotnot you can literally type whole lines of code by repeatedly hammering the Enter key and banging a semicolon at the end.

If you think Intellisense is good you should really try Visual Assist, it's far better and it's refactoring tools are invaluable.

randella

digitalscream said:

On that note...Notepad+ has syntax highlighting support. Never knew that.

Notepad++ is in my top five all-time list of free software tools that everybody should be screaming about from the rooftops.  It's extraordinarily useful.  Paint.NET (no relation to the MS framework of the same name) is another one.

monquixote

PolarityMan said:

gdb and dbx are fucking horrendous. Do you know how hard it is even to do simple things like view a vector?

I have to work on embedded platforms where the only debugging available is redirecting a printf down a serial port!