[kls]

Replying to my own post but I also did this with VS Code. Brand has a lot to do with first impression. When someone I knew told me to try out VS Code my first impression was I have spent too many years in Visual Studio already why would I want to go to what is obviously the lite version. It was only after seeing it, and seeing the support it had in the community did it overcome that initial bias. I hold that same bias towards Eclipse and my initial reaction was great web enabled Eclipse, no thanks.

[crocodiletears]

Out of curiosity, what sold you on VS code over VS?

I use Sublime to edit smaller code bases, and web technologies because it gets out of my way, and obfuscates nothing from me. I use VS if I need to work with larger codebases in compiled languages with static typing, complex build processes, or multiple dependencies.

I tried it about a year after it first launched, but only for a couple days. VS code strikes me as a hybrid between the two, but from what little I've tried of it, my experience has been that it's less snappy than Sublime, while attempting to obfuscate the things the way VS proper does, which I find distracting when working with js/Python/html. When it came to the large CPP code-base I was toying with, its felt slower to work in than VS, and I couldn't find any compelling reasons (killer features) to learn its conventions.

I know quite a few people using code for web development, but they haven't really told me why ("it's just better").

I get the impression I'm missing out on something wonderful here, and I don't want to be an anachronism. But I just don't know why I'd want to switch unless I needed a heavier IDE on my Linux box.

[kls]

Two things, integrated and well put together debugger for node and chrome debugging in the IDE would be the first feature for me that stuck out. I am a debugger or REPL forward developer, I like to digest code in small chunks. VS Code has some fairly slick debugging features. Second it's a text editor that acts like and IDE or it's an IDE that acts like an editor, I cannot really decide which it is and I think that is the sweet spot. It also has a huge base of quality plugins for a host of languages.

I am not sold on strong typing for the web and SPA's there is just so much tear down rebuild and remodel that I don't know if the gains are there. Given that I take that view I tend to shun a full and robust IDE in favor of a text editor with language support. VS Code is something a little bit more than that, and I it hits a sweet spot for me. When I have to support our legacy Java apps I jump back to Intellj Idea but it's not my favorite and goes a little too far towards the IDE side.

When I do embedded C, I tend to prefer a full blown IDE as it's just too easy to get lost in the weeds of a large C code base. Which is usually CLion.

[k__]

Yes, same here.