The hackers and programmers that I grew up with knew all about Microsoft and realized that they were relentlessly predatory. Lately Microsoft has been trying to project a kinder, gentler image but developers from my cohort who have not yet succumbed to dementia are not deceived. We still view anything the company does with suspicion.
Which brings us to the new hotness: VS Code. The gullible are flocking to it blinded by the bling and LSP integration. What could go wrong? It’s open source, you know. Except it isn’t really. The core software is open source but the parts that give the editor its value are all firmly under Microsoft’s control.
Geoffrey Huntley has a post that posits all is going according to Microsoft’s plan. VS Code, he says, is designed specifically to fracture the developer community and bring us all into the fold of software as a service development tools. VS Code is Microsoft’s one ring to bind them all. It’s a strategy that worked remarkably well in the business sphere with Word, Excel, and Exchange so why not go after developers too?
Irreal has always taken the position that editors are a personal matter and you should use whichever editor best meets your needs but it also pays to know what you’re getting into. Even if VS Code’s pervasive gathering of telemetry doesn’t bother you, you should beware of landing on that sweet smelling flower lest the leaves snap closed around you.