Reasons I Switched to VS Code
The top reasons I decided to switch to VS Code as my editor of choice.
To give some additional context, my previous text editor of choice was Sublime Text 3. I swore by it (mostly due to ignorance) and used it for all of my code editing. If I ever found a feature missing I was always just another package away from finding what I needed. However, over time Sublime Text 3 became less and less stable the more packages I added.
Eventually, it became tiring to use an unstable text editor that missed many of the features I wanted. That is when I came to terms with the fact that Sublime Text is just a text editor and most of the features I wanted would come from something closer to an IDE.
Here is really the criteria that I was looking for:
- Light/fast
- Easy to use
- Widely adopted with a lot of support
Deep down I REALLY didn’t want to use VS Code, but after I got started I realized how crazy I was to avoid it.
Here are the reasons I switched and the reasons I still use it today.
Extensions
The support and ease of use for most extensions are fantastic. Looking through extensions is really a breeze and finding the good ones through the reviews could not be more simple.
You just type in the search bar
Choose one of the highest-rated extensions that fit your use case
Then click install
Adoption
While there are plenty of people that use other text editors including Sublime Text the adoption of VS Code is just far greater. When I run into an issue, want to understand a feature, or need to find a shortcut there is ALWAYS a forum or article describing how to do it.
I don’t think it has ever taken me more than 10 minutes to figure out how to do a particular task or troubleshoot a specific issue. Just having such a wide adoption helps to make resolving any issues much easier because the content is out there.
Out of the Box Features
VS Code has a ton of out of the box features and the customization is really granular. Making it into the text editor that you want might take a little research and editing configuration files, but due to the wide adoption, you can find the help you need.
Out of the box some things that made me switch were:
- Integrated terminal
- Extensions (like I said before)
- Integrations with Github
- Auto-saving
- Debugging
Some of these things can still be accomplished with other text editors, but from my experience, they are less stable when you start to add too many packages.
Conclusion
For anyone looking for their text editor of choice, I hope this was helpful. If you have any other thoughts or questions feel free to share them in the comments!
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