I wonder at which point does it make sense to switch from VSCode, regardless of its absolute exemplary use of Electron, to VS2022 for that sweet performance gain on non-M1 Macs.
>at which point does it make sense to switch from VSCode, regardless of its absolute exemplary use of Electron, to VS2022
It seems like those 2 IDEs have different ecosystems:
- VSCode - has more non-NET non-C# coding such as Javascript/Python/Rust -- which means more 3rd-party plugins contributed by the community
- Visual Studio - more emphasis on .NET and C# with all extra bells & whistles such as WPF GUI builder etc.
Yes, one can try to do the opposite of their ecosystem strengths (VSCode for C# and VS2022 for Node.js Javascript) but that's going against the current. In other words, it's not really a Electron-vs-native type of decision. It's about core language ecosystem.
(Microsoft's confusing branding strategy of naming one as "Visual Studio" and the other with 99% identical name of "Visual Studio _Code_" does not make it obvious how those IDEs are positioned for different markets.)
In practice, it means Javascript/Python programmers have more community knowledge/plugins in VSCode than VS2019.
Yes, even though VS2010 added Python language support 5 years before VSCode was released in 2015, they have very different ecosystems and communities.
VSCode is more popular with the Python community (especially in the open source landscape) than VS2019. E.g. virtually all Python/Jupyter data science tutorials use VSCode instead of VS2019.
Even though one code Python in VS2019, a lot of programmers realize they don't code "Python in a vacuum" and want the tech advancements made by the community (plugins, tutorials, etc). VSCode costing $0 also helps too.
That's the point I was trying to make with my parent comment: it's not really comparing Electron runtime vs native code; it's comparing core language ecosystems.
VS2019 is more prominent for companies compiling C++ native apps and C# corporate apps (ASP.NET and WPF projects). That VS2019 also has Javascript and Python support doesn't change the fact that the majority mindshare for js/py is over in VSCode.
Also, the latest dev surveys I saw reported that for Python coders, VSCode recently surpassed Jetbrains Pycharm in popularity.
Best native editor of the current decade, but after years of working with Atom and then VSCode, leaving the JS-everything plugin ecosystem is tough. I constantly want to make the switch myself too.
And even more confusing, it's "Visual Studio for Mac" which is a completely different product than "Visual Studio" ("VS Mac" is just a rebranded MonoDevelop).
Visual Studio Mac is now quite a lot different from MonoDevelop. I've used both (though the latter was a long time ago outside of Unity) and VS Mac is quite a lot more "there" and is definitely a more full implementation. It was closer to VS in 2019, I've yet to install 2022 so I can't speak for it.
VS Code on Mac was quite buggy till recently. If you opened a large file or a file with long lines, the editor would crawl to a halt. I have a project where I use VSMac to do all the C# and VSCode to do the C (as VSMac 2019 doesn't actually support C or C++ projects - not even CMake IIRC) and there was one file with very long lines that VS Code couldn't handle. I did notice that a recent update seems to have fixed VS Code though (it might have been the C++ plugin that was broken to be honest, I don't know.)
That's a bit misleading. It's a rebranded Xamarin Studio, which was based on MonoDevelop. But the a lot of the underlying engine and code renderers are based on Visual Studio now (as of 2019). The longer it is since it was called "MonoDevelop" the less "MonoDevelop" code is left. If 2022 has removed the GTK+ UI wrapper, I guess it is very distantly based on MonoDevelop now.
