As if you needed another reason not to use Visual Studio, C++ extension for Visual Studio Code is live Microsoft has shunted the C++ extension for Visual Studio Code to general availability. The Reg took it for the compulsory "Hello World!" spin in Windows 10 to see how it worked and found it quite delightful (if C++ is your thing). IntelliSense and code formatting is present and correct, as is semantic colouring to show when a …
No, you can get gdb up on it. As far as what is new in debugging with VS since VS6, maybe not, but if you've used VS6 all that is there.
The _FATAL_ problem isn't Code itself, it's Electron. After you open enough files the entire IDE drops into an unresponsive life wasting mess. In some cases it's just not a simple restart, sometimes plugins (platform.io) seem to vanish and in the most unfortunate cases so does your settings for them.
Microsoft thought Eclipse was too cross platform and fast, so they decided to eclipse... Eclipse. It's conceptually a really good IDE, but everything is absolutely, positively, undeniably SLOW. Because of Electron, it can literally never be, a serious IDE.
I've got into using it for ruby of late because its fairly cross platform (albeit electron which I would prefer it to be native too) and compared to Rubymine (corporate choice) things feel really responsive. Now if only the debugger could step into child threads properly like Rubymine can when using remote ruby-debug-ide.
To put a finger in the air metric, there's 5000 files in the current project I have open in it and it seems to cope quite nicely. I use it on osx and linux.
Also I quite like to hook remote things in python using it, and xcode for php etc is nice and works ok. Ive never seen the platform.io issues etc yet, maybe theyre lying in wait for me later on.
For c++ usual habits are to use vim + gdb/cmd line stuff mostly with a dash of ghidra but I work so much in web stuff now I rarely do any now...
I think it's been a bumpy path...
I used VC++6 and it had Intellisense, which was awesome.
When I later tried (the free editions of) VS 2008 and 2010, C++ support was barely visible (compared to C#): you could type, create projects (e.g. add new classes [header and body files per class]), and compile, but the clever stuff didn't work.
I always felt that if I wanted to stray outside the .NET bubble, I'd need to pay up for a real version.
Evidently, that's what's changed.
No, it's always been there. In fact, Visual Studio (not Code) err... might be the best IDE for C++ (sorry :-/). However, I will admit that if you're not experienced in one way or another as a system programmer, you might not know that many see MS VS as basically the C++ compiler for WinAPI... and that's it (No c#, no VB, no wtf ever). So, yes it undoubtedly has and has had C++ support forever.
Truthfully, getting C++ working in any IDE I've used is no different than getting C working. And if you can't get C working? People shamefully say that this or that IDE didn't have this or that for C or C++, when the reality is that if it's written anywhere in C or C++, they just have no excuse (for tools at least... for tools).
I still use MFC for Windows stuff. It's gotten "bloatier" though. it also take some effort to REMOVE! ALL! REFERENCES! TO! CLR! AND! OTHER! SUCH! BLOAT!
And I still use DevStudio 2010, the LAST one that was NOT all 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE, which was ALSO oriented towards Windows 7, and NOT "Ape" nor Win-10-nic.
What I'd like to see is wxWidgets support, INCLUDING dialog editors, toolbar editors, menu editors, and other such things. THAT is TRUE cross-platform, very MFC-like (not 1:1, takes some time to port an MFC application to wxWidgets, but it CAN be done) and DEFINITELY suited for serious cross-platform application development.
I've run wxWidgets/GTK applications on FreeBSD and Linux. Should run the same on windows and Mac. In fact I put a nice "sort demo" written for wx out there on github if anyone wants to have a look. it was originally an MFC application, back in the 90's. It's since been improved.
/me points out, if you're going to haul around some monolithic library of excess, might as well static-link it and use something that's truly cross-platform. Sure you'll have to build a version for each OS, but with static link you get minimal dependencies and fewer support issues caused by anything resembling DLL HELL...
In any case, it would be _WISE_ to have wizards and editing tools for wxWidgets in VS Code. THAT might make it worth using, In My Bombastic Opinion.
I got really tired of Visual Studio and Eclipse. I HATE having to drill into a dialog box every time I want to change my build settings, include paths etc. I very much favor IDEs that use text files for build/project configuration. Using eclipse on our last project was so bad I was actually getting wrist and arm pain from click click clicking on dialog boxes. You know things are bad when CMake becomes the less painful option!
KDevelop has become an excellent IDE, though there are some odd key map duplicates when you first install it. Every keymap can be re-assigned which is both a blessing and a curse. Regardless, it's smoking fast, has lots of tools and is cross platform. I use it with CMake or xmake
CLion is now my hands down favourite IDE. Though the key mappings aren't as flexible as KDevelop - and you are more or less glued to CMake - I have found it to be fast, full features and incredibly robust. The only outstanding issue I have so far is getting OpenOCD to work with it for debugging embedded systems.
CLion is so good in fact, I can't wait to try Ryder so I can ditch Visual Studio 2019 for my C# development.
> I very much favor IDEs that use text files for build/project configuration
FWIW VS Code satisfies this too. All the VSCode-specific per-project settings(*) are JSON-with-comments files in a ".vscode" directory. Building from the IDE generally invokes the same CLI build tool as you'd be using if you weren't using an IDE at all & will be using the same build config files as you'd have on CI.
(* this is mostly stuff like, say, launch.json tells VSC which binary to invoke when you press F5 and whether or not to pop open the mini-terminal when you do so.)
> I HATE having to drill into a dialog box every time I want to change my build settings, include paths etc.
On that note, have you ever tried using XCode? Now there's a huge bundle of endless suffering.
I used to think this way as well. Then I tried CLion on more complex code and chose to abandon it. It becomes PAINFULLY slow. Almost all the “convenience functions” (like refactoring) do NOT work in more complex scenarios. The only thing that works reliably, is what is being provided by the CLANG back-end and thus is to be found in QtCreator, KDevelop and others as well.
I haven't written code for a while so wanted to see how quickly it would be to get started again so on the basis of this article installed Visual Studio Code. The C++ is definitely there in the extensions and it's supports the file format .cpp etc..
Wrote a quick hello world app and couldn't see Compile. Also the #include <iostream> was underlined.
So it turns out I also need to install .NET SDK and a C++ compiler. I went to the Microsoft site and it basically wants me to install the full Visual Studio.
Why can't it be simple to get started and going?
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