Very good points. A codebase that gets this VERY wrong is Gitlab. I think it might be a dumb characteristic of Ruby programs, but they generate identifiers all over the place. I once had to literally give up following some code because I could not find what it was calling anywhere. Insanity.

Another point: don’t use - in names. Eventually you’ll have to write them down in a programming language, at which point you have to change the name. CSS made this mistake. foo-bar in CSS maps to fooBar in Javascript. Rust also made this mistake with crate names. A crate called foo-bar magically becomes foo_bar in Rust code.

It can understand, just not as well.

You can’t confidently say that because nobody knows how to solve the bullshitting issue. It might end up being very similar to current LLMs.

He’s right that it’s probably harder for AI to understand. But wrong in every other way possible. Human understanding should trump AI, at least while they’re as unreliable as they currently are.

Maybe one day AI will know how to not bullshit, and everyone will use it, and then we’ll start writing documentation specifically for AI. But that’s a long way off.

I wouldn’t recommend it. I actually looked up COBOL jobs a while ago, and while they paid more, it was only like 20% more - not enough to make it worth it IMO.

Huh I did not know Roku (the on-the-way-out TV company) made their own scripting language. How bizarre.

Has anyone used Jujutsu and Sapling? Which is better?

Have a go on your free time and see if you like it. There is an absolute ton of free learning material online. You don’t need to pay anyone.

Most programming jobs (e.g. making web sites) are easy enough for the average person to do, but I think most people would find programming far too tedious and boring to learn.

It’s like law - there’s nothing particularly difficult about it but most people find it incredibly mind numbing to read legal documents.

So I would have a go in your free time first to make sure it is something you could do.

I don’t really know anything about Vim so I’d have to take your word for it.

Where’s the code that doesn’t quote this properly? I’m guessing it’s Bash.

They’re saying it’s a code editor and an IDE.

lol it doesn’t have testing or debugging by default!

So the fact that they’ve designed it with an extensible architecture somehow makes it not an IDE? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

I guess Eclipse isn’t an IDE either then?

They didn’t have that originally

They added it within 4 months of launch.

they added it because of people like you that are arguing that it’s an IDE when it clearly isn’t.

They added text saying it is an IDE because they didn’t want people to think it is an IDE? I think you’ve misunderstood.

It’s a text editor with code highlighting, fast search, and an understanding of different languages…

And integrated debugging, testing, refactoring, … Why exactly do you think it is not an IDE?

Yes I’d say so.

MS even clarified that it’s not an IDE

Microsoft doesn’t get to define what an IDE is. Also… I actually reread what they said and the implicitly say it is an IDE (and a “code editor” which is a fairly meaningless term):

Visual Studio Code is a streamlined code editor with support for development operations like debugging, task running, and version control. It aims to provide just the tools a developer needs for a quick code-build-debug cycle and leaves more complex workflows to fuller featured IDEs, such as Visual Studio IDE.

“to fuller featured IDEs”, not “to IDEs”.

In that case I would recommend using an IDE that supports C well. On Windows Visual Studio will get you far and it is the easiest to set up with wizards to create projects etc.

Alternatively you could use VSCode but it’s a bit harder to set up.

1. Install VSCode
2. Install the clangd extension from the marketplace. It’s better than the official Microsoft C++ one.
3. Also install the CMake extension.
4. Create a CMake project by hand (you need CMakelists.txt and main.c). In the CMake make sure you add

set(CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS TRUE)

That will give you perfect code intelligence (error squiggles etc).

Yes in some ways it is not a beginner friendly IDE. I would also point to launch.json as being a right arse.

Still an IDE though.

There isn’t a hard line. IDE means Integrated Development Environment. It just means that tools that - in the stone ages - were used separately are integrated into your editor. Common tools that IDEs integrate that would be separate tools with a text editor like Notepad:

• Debuggers
• Code intelligence (auto-complete, refactoring, go-to-definition, find-references, etc.)
• Compile/run/debug shortcuts
• Test running and displaying results
• Version control

VSCode has all of those. The fact that it implements them in a pluggable way doesn’t mean it doesn’t.

Even though “is it an IDE” is a blurry line, VSCode is very clearly far across that line.

The only reasons people say it isn’t are a) as a put-down - it’s not a real IDE like <my favourite alternative> - or b) because Microsoft put some nonsense about it not being an IDE on their website in order to try and explain why they make two IDEs (VSCode and VS).

What language are you using?

VSCode is absolutely an IDE. It is full of IDE features. The idea that it isn’t an IDE is one of those weird memes that won’t die, like people saying “an historic occasion”.

Very nice! This is definitely an annoying problem.

I’m not trusting this to Python though.