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by a_wild_dandan 963 days ago
Categorizing VS Code as akin to Microsoft Word or Google Docs seems...profoundly weird and more confusing than elucidating. I'm gonna stick with "IDE", personally.

[EDIT] It seems folks won't classify Word/GDocs as "text editors" due to their additional features. Great point! I'm getting deja vu...

3 comments

Word and Google Docs are not text editors [0], they are word processors [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editor

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processor_program

Yep. I didn't call Word/Docs/Code text editors, and all for the same reason. That's the joke. Guess I was too cute by half.
You're missing that IDEs have additional functionality not built into text editors or source code editors.
Indeed I am. What universal IDE functionality is missing from VSCode? My vanilla install is aces for full-stack TypeScript work, but I'd love to know what I'm missing!
I'm sure you would!
Microsoft Word and Google Docs are _Word Processors_ which are technically for editing text but are now much closer to desktop publishing software, especially with the emphasis on styling and graphics.

emacs, vim, and VSCode are _Source Code Editors_ which are a type of text editor. You can make a source code editor into an IDE by adding integrated compiling and debugging tools.

That would indeed be weird given the fact that the text editor does not edit rich text like Word does