[jug]

With Microsoft backtracking on their Visual Studio non-Code designer interface and no longer offering it for modern Windows apps (WinUI 3)… Honestly… Is this a long term plan to just sunset Visual Studio?

It always felt like it to me. From the get go. But they deny it. Still, Visual Studio is so heavy, feels sluggish, written in WPF, and not from an era of modern, plugin-based software development.

Visual Studio Code also offers many features VS don’t. Oh, and it perfectly debugged Python code on Windows for me (VS somehow failed to attach its debugger to Python.exe) and auto-detected venv’s for me from the mere folder structure, none of which Visual Studio did.

Code feels like the .NET Core of Microsoft editors to me. Not only new thing for cross-platform development, but the next thing for Windows development too. Just like .NET Core.

Sure, Code still miss things but those only feel like extensions away at best. A far better and less monolithic design. Now, if we could only have it be WebView2 based rather than Electron on Windows and cut 50% RAM use right off the bat…

[biugbkifcjk]

As someone that works with a lot of different languages - vscode has been amazing. I feel its inevitable that a majority of the plugins I rely on start requiring some sort of subscription - which I'm not looking forward too.

[usrusr]

Denial might be as much a show for the motivation of the team that keeps maintaining the relic for some large old cash cow customers as it perhaps is for the outside world. Old customers that are perfectly locked in across the entire product portfolio. But if VS suddenly disappeared, all the other business they have with those customers would suddenly be open for reconsideration as well.

[delfinom]

Dunno man, to me VSCode feels sluggish.

It takes a significant amount of clicks debugging C++. I can't just have the file and debug views present at the same time, I have to keep jumping back and forth.

The launch json config system also introduced a ridiculous amount of verbosity, not to mention it's insanely easy to multi launch instances and confuse yourself.

[alexvoda]

The WPF version of VS has supported many plugins from the start (2010). The previous version (2003-2008) also supported plugins but not sure how extensively. Before that VS was just the name for a suite of different tools (Visual C++, Visual Basic, Visual InterDev and a few others).

[jug]

Absolutely but it just feels like VS Code has taken the extension based model even more to its heart. I think the difference was striking when I first started using it. What would be bundled with VS is often just an extension in Code. It’s wholly language agnostic in that regard. Even JavaScript, Python or their own C# requires an extension for anything but the lightest support such as syntax. It’s based around linters and language servers, often outsourced to third parties to relieve Microsoft of the burden besides their own technologies. It just comes across as the more sensible way to build an editor or IDE without overwhelming your own team and making it more maintainable in the long run. And ultimately that this will even show up in the quality of the product they market itself.

[kiririn]

Visual Studio will stick around for use cases like game dev, driver dev, etc