[cbxyp]

Used this a few years ago in early stages before VS code remote was a thing. It's very useful to add some interface extensibility components into VS Code's framework. I suspect microsoft made some intentional design decision to make this harder to do in VS code's apis, totally eschewing any real editor extensibility in favor of a "apps in the editor, not extending the editor" design vs Atom's much more open ended allowance for modifications. For example, if you wanted to make a form builder in VS code for VS code extensions - that would not be usable outside of the Webview tab functionality without modifying the editor source. Glad eclipse foundation recognized this and is providing some groundwork to make a real IDE out of VS code. Theia was also the first to provide support for running vscode-as-a-platform and run via web browser, at least support that was functional and working.

[bad_user]

When comparing VS Code with Atom, vim, Emacs, others, an underappreciated fact is that extensions just work, and are very easy to install and configure, which has much to do with its model. Atom was unusable for me, because, as you installed extensions, something always broke.

This is also similar to the old Firefox vs Chrome. The former was great for power users, but it crashed a lot and Firefox installs of regular people were riddled with insecure extensions that broke the browser and that couldn't even be un-installed.

VS Code does have flaws, but having limited extensions is not one of them, IMO.

[sureglymop]

They don't "just work". There are many many extensions that require external tools in the path etc. and some even go as far as to try to download such dependencies (and leave them on the system). Generally one should definitely read the extension documentation and there may be some manual steps needed (meaning that they don't just work).

It's true that the most popular extensions work fairly well though.

[ReleaseCandidat]

> VS Code does have flaws, but having limited extensions is not one of them, IMO.

Exactly. Of course as somebody who writes extensions I'd sometimes like the possibility to change stuff at a "deeper" level - like having multi-line text decorations. But as a user I really prefer the model to the Emacs' one. Emacs (and I guess *vim) works best if the user writes all the code themselves.

[Onavo]

> an underappreciated fact is that extensions just work, and are very easy to install and configure

This is partially because of cultural reasons. VS Code was originally a code editor made for web developers, by web developers. It follows directly in the footsteps of Atom. Web developers, for good or for bad, value the user experience of software working out of the box so they tend to bundle everything. Systems engineers, those of the C/Python camp tend to optimize for efficiency and prefers the user to manually setup out-of-band binaries.

[satvikpendem]

Yep, I routinely get breaking changes with my neovim config, so I now keep both VSCode and neovim installed.

[dmix]

> I suspect microsoft made some intentional design decision to make this harder to do in VS code's apis,

That's probably giving how software is made at these orgs too much credit.

[wkat4242]

Yeah I'm always amazed how Microsoft can make both the best performing electron app, Vs code, and the absolute worst one in ms teams. At the same time. Clearly zero coordination going on there :(