[bilbo0s]

Why switch from VS Code to Codium? That makes even less sense than a switch to Eclipse.

If you're on VS Code, just use VS Code. If you're on Eclipse, just use Eclipse.

But yeah, get to market. Quibbling over quasi-religious beliefs, like X is better than Y, is exactly what allows some kid on his couch in his boxers watching SportsCenter while working on his website to beat your funded startup to market.

[reaperducer]

Why switch from VS Code to Codium?

For me, it was because I don't want to be spied on by Microsoft. VS Codium is VS Code without the telemetry and tracking.

[flyinglizard]

As I became involved in more and more products and customer feedback, I started opting into telemetry collection programs. It’s ultimately what helps make the products I use better.

[GordonS]

Firstly, let me say that I'm a big advocate for privacy.

But, for products I love, I also sometimes opt in to telemetry - it depends on the product, the company, and the data that's collected.

In the case of Visual Studio Code, it's very clear what data is collected, and I decided I was fine with it. It's free, it's OSS, and I want to help make it even better.

My only gripe with VS Code is that the telemetry is opt-out, rather than opt-in. Yes, it's easy to opt-out, but that's not the point - IMO, it should always be opt-in.

[reaperducer]

In my opinion, you're doing it either wrong or lazy.

My company doesn't do telemetry. We do actual user testing with actual users, even to the point of shadowing them as they use the product. The same way it's been done for the last 40 years.

You learn more from interfacing with the wetware than you do grepping logs.

[jakear]

Why not both? User testing won't help you with questions like "there's a bug in feature X, but the fix will potentially impact feature Y in unforeseen ways. Given we're shipping soon, is it a good idea to apply the fix now or should we apply a much simpler mitigation and postpose the full fix till next iteration so we can get more testing in or even implement a larger refactoring that would resolve this category of bugs by design?"

If feature X is used way less frequently than feature Y, the answer is obvious. If feature Y is used way less frequently than feature X, the answer is obvious. If its a wash, you move on to look at different metrics.

This isn't a hypothetical, I ran this exact scenario yesterday against the VS Code telemetry.

I applied the mitigation, the refactoring is coming next week. :)

[reaperducer]

Why not both?

Because you respect your users and know their privacy has value.

[jakear]

I'm interested in your point of view. If I run a query that tells me X hundred thousand users have used feature Y, have I violated anyone's privacy in your opinion?

Also, would you think it's better to not collect such non personally identifiable user information at the expense of quality and stability of product?

[GordonS]

For some products, yes, user shadowing, interviews and testing is enough.

But in the case of VS Code, I agree with the other commenters that you can benefit from both.

VS Code supports many languages, source control systems, workflows, external systems and extensions, and it's used by a very wide spectrum of users and developers. I can see why they believe telemetry is required to better understand how it's used.

[cookiecaper]

They don't have to be mutually exclusive, do they? You can surely learn some things from large-scale telemetry collection that you can't learn from user studies (e.g., semi-representative "in the wild" performance metrics).

[manigandham]

People act differently when they're being watched. Capturing the normal usage as they work with your product without any oversight can reveal a lot.

[prophesi]

Erm, how does it make less sense? Codium is literally more vscode than VS Code itself. So if you're on VS Code, just use Codium.