What, if any, alternatives to VS Code do you recommend? I think VS Code is a pretty great editor, but I have some objections to it which have been stacking up for some time now, and I'm looking for something that could potentially replace it.
If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them! Here are the things I'm currently prioritizing:
- Fast (read "not an Electron app"), preferably relatively small memory/CPU footprint.
- Not owned by Microsoft
- Excellent out of the box language support for many mainstream languages, or a plugin ecosystem which has plugins to that add support for those languages
- Smart refactoring tools (sometimes find and replace isn't good enough)
- A strong plugin ecosystem. I like to make use of advanced debugging tools when they are available. Also, good plugins can go a long way toward quality of life features.
Alternative's I'm considering
I have tried or looked into a few alternatives, but I'm not sold on any of them yet.
- Lapce. Seems solid, but the plugins often seem like they are out of date and there's no way to tell whether they are except by trying them out. Also, even though Rust has good language support, I've found some of the other language support to be lacking.
- Emacs. I've been hearing about Emacs lately, so I'm considering looking into it in more depth, but I haven't yet. I guess have two main concerns with Emacs: 1) I'm not sure how many advanced features it offers because I'm not sure what it's plugin ecosystem is like, and 2) How good is Emacs' Windows support?
- Zed. I'm really excited about this option as it seems very promising, but I only use Windows and Linux 😥
- Vim/Neovim. These tools have been around for a long time and are pretty performant according to my understanding, but from my experience, they don't seem to have many features beyond syntax highlighting, and I'd prefer more advanced features.
I'd love to hear any suggestions from the community! Also, if you have any thoughts about the editors I've already tried, I'd love to hear those too!
Top comments (10)
I switched from VSCode to Vim a few months ago and I haven't thought about going back. VS Code took up tons of space, where vim isn't as large, is much faster, and you don't have to leave the CLI to use it. I know VS Code has a built-in terminal, but Vim has none of the VS Code nav bar on top, or anything on the side. It's built to code. There are plugins for things, like a stats bar at the bottom, but you install that yourself.
EDIT: One possible disadvantage is that its keyboard shortcuts take a fair amount of getting used to.
TL;DR: Vim forces you to control everything, and is quite minimalistic and uncluttered.
Yeah, the shortcuts have deterred me from learning how to use Vim in the past. What resources did you find helpful when you were learning the shortcuts?
I mostly just typed
viminto my terminal and really just read the basic docs again and again, until I knew exactly how to quit. Then I learned how to enter/exit insert mode (i/Esc). Then I started typingviminto my terminal again, and reading the docs. Also typed a lot of:help x. That was all I needed, until I started working on a.vimrc. That's why I learned to change color schemes, add line numbers, etc.Good to know. Thanks for the tip!
well, vim can do a lot more than syntax highlighting, but that functionality is managed by plugins. i like the plugin approach, personally, as it allows you to adjust how feature-heavy your editor is.
if you're looking for something that borders on being a full ide for vim, you can always give lunarvim a try:
lunarvim.org/
I never realized that vim had plugins! I'll definitely have to look more closely at it, then. Lunarvim looks like it might suit my needs very well since I am come from a background of using heavyweight IDEs.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Maybe you should try out 'Sublime Text'? I love this editor. sublimetext.com
Sublime text looks interesting. What is Sublime Text's most useful feature in your opinion? What feature or features make it so good in your opinion?
I really like the Package Manager (packagecontrol.io) and the robustness of sublime. In the nearly 10 years that I've been using the editor, I haven't experienced any crashes or similar issues. It's simply very reliable.
That's awesome that it's that Sublime Text is that stable. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely give it a look!
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.