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MS Releases "Visual Studio Code" - a Slim Cross Platform Code Editor
Microsoft appears like they may actually be starting to get serious about cross platform support. Their new slim code editor for developing cloud applications supports both OS X and Linux, as well as Windows.
At its Build developer conference, Microsoft today announced the launch of Visual Studio Code, a lightweight cross-platform code editor for writing modern web and cloud applications that will run on OS X, Linux and Windows. The application is still officially in preview, but you can now download it here (if this link isn’t live yet, give it a few more minutes and then try again).
This marks the first time that Microsoft offers developers a true cross-platform code editor. The full Visual Studio is still Windows-only, but today’s announcement shows the company’s commitment to supporting other platforms.
From the Techcrunch article:
Today’s announcement will surely come as a surprise to many. It does, however, fit in well with the direction the company’s developer group has been on for quite a while now, be that the open sourcing of .NET Core (and taking that platform cross-platform) or the launch of the free Visual Studio Community edition.
Another Publicity Stunt from MSFT: "Visual Studio Code"
Roy Schestowitz at TechRights reports "Visual Studio Code": Not News, Not Free, Not Open Source
Another publicity stunt from Microsoft, this time going under the name "Visual Studio Code", which is basically proprietary lock-in
Despite an openwashing campaign and an effort to deceive the public (as chronicled here before), Visual Studio is (and will remain) proprietary. There is currently yet another PR blitz from Microsoft, which at the moment is trying to openwash it and pretend that it's "news" (it's not, it goes back to last year).
Sadly, some FOSS proponents have already fallen for it and Phoronix is doing marketing for Microsoft. This is not really news and it's not even a surprise. It's just some publicity stunt which got Microsoft boosters and Microsoft-friendly sites on board.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TGV on Friday May 01 2015, @05:40AM
I tried it, and it is lacking for my work flow. I tried to edit some TypeScript files, and sure, it has autocompletion and a decent syntax check for that, and it can jump to a symbols definition, but that's all. The editor lacks other kinds of navigation tools, from finding the corresponding bracket to navigating inside a class definition. I couldn't get the debugger to run, since I'm on OSX and it required Mono 3.1 or up (bit odd for a TypeScript project, but there you go). So they should either put some effort in refining the editor, or add their changes to the OSS project and hope for the best.
(Score: 2) by microtodd on Friday May 01 2015, @12:26PM
Agreed. On a Mac here. I downloaded and gave it a fair shot. Within seconds I already recognized it didn't have what all I needed.
No code block collapsing.
No jump-to-matching brace.
No regex find or find/replace.
I feel like this wouldn't be very useful for any professional-level, or even advanced hobbyist developers. But I notice it has github integration built in. I guess they're aiming for a specific market, which isn't me.
(Score: 2) by TGV on Friday May 01 2015, @12:37PM
Regexp it does have. You have to click on the icon .* next to the search pattern. Find-replace is accessible by clicking on the triangle to the left of the search pattern. Really flat, modern design. Sarcasm aside, it's not hard to get used to, and it takes less space than the bulky dialogs of yesteryear that hid most of the code you were looking for. But Netbeans, XCode, VS, or emacs it ain't.