back to article Visual Studio Code Server untethers developers from their workstations

Microsoft has tossed its hat into the increasingly crowded ring of code-anywhere developer tools with a private preview of Visual Studio Code Server. The product follows the Remote Development extensions for Visual Studio Code, which permitted apps to be developed using a local copy of the IDE and a "remote" Windows Subsystem …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "...esteem in which Visual Studio Code is held."

    I'm tired of reading about the underexposed and inexperienced.

    Microsoft brainwashes kids to promote products. In time, that 60 billion dollar game publisher will have editors writing how advanced and customizable Windows 11 is.

    Is there still a difference between the words "editor" and "influencer"?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Meh

      Can't say I ever saw anyone raving about Atom, which VCS is based on, but as soon as you stick MS' name on it it's suddenly fantastic.

      1. J.Teodor

        Maybe because Atom was sluggish as heck, the project lacked direction and plugin ecosystem was... not there?

        I barely use VCS - I actually don't like it all that much and find the UI very unintuitive, I only use it to edit documentation, as $work requires specific set of linters and such for .md - but compared to Atom...

        Also, is there really a such thing as MS fanboy? I use a metric b*tt-ton of MS stuff - it just works, it is not glowingly innovative or something for praising blog posts, so for me, it is feels like it would be a fanboy of "I cannot believe it isn't butter!"

        But then again, I am old and jaded. I actually discovered recently there are fanbois [sp] of Elon Musk, and here I was thinking he is white cat short of Bond villain...

        1. Swarthy

          RE: Musk as a Bond Villain

          I liked Musk better when he was practically a Bond Villain. However, he has slid into Billionaire Dementia, and makes most of the Bond villains (Including Dr. Evil) look personable, competent, and rational.

          Comparing Elon to Bond villains is a disservice to Ian Fleming's works.

          1. J.Teodor

            Re: RE: Musk as a Bond Villain

            You are right. Sorry. I will from now on only refer to him as "wannabe Bond villain".

    2. werdsmith Silver badge

      Personally I've used a lot of IDEs and Editors. Never actually settling because there's always something not quite right, from a bloaty nightmare of Eclipse right through to simple text editor and shell script build.

      When I tried VSC I first thought it was awkward, until I found the right extensions, and I haven't looked back, it's ideal for me. Cross platform, relatively lightweight, not especially associated with a particular language and its 3p extension options are seemingly endless.

      And I'm not alone in finding this, which leads to the availability of loads of tutorials in how to sites and videos that are standardised in this one environment. Which makes my communication easier too.

      I know there is an underlying bias in some people because it's associated with Microsoft but objectively, for me and a lot of other people it has been the best thing to happen to our development situation for years.

    3. AdeV

      At nearly 50, I'm no brainwashed kid... But for most languages and text editing tasks, VSC - especially with its remoting abilities and huge range of plugins, is now my go-to tool. I can be sitting here at home, writing Go code on a Raspberry Pi, and the companion code for an ESP32 on another machine - both of which are at the office...

      The sole exception for me is C#, which Visual Studio does better.

    4. JamesTGrant Bronze badge

      What editor do you prefer?

      Personally, I think VSC is really good and very versatile (apart from the ‘open folder in current window’ messing up currently open terminal sessions) and getting better all the time.

  2. ebyrob

    Remote Desktop Connection

    1998 called, they want their Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) back.

    Why on earth would anyone need this in today's world? It's so easy to remote control any computer now.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Remote Desktop Connection

      RDP desktops or applications give you two concurrent sessions for free, need any more then you have to pass over some $$$ to MS. I don't know about the situation with this thing. But it's not the first of its kind so there is some demand somewhere.

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Re: Remote Desktop Connection

        RDP protocol was/is one of the few awesomely-useful things MS has developed. If you don't like the MS licensing, use FOSS RDP server and client software.

        1. werdsmith Silver badge

          Re: Remote Desktop Connection

          I didn’t complain about MS licensing, just pointed out a detail in response to a comparison between this software and RDP. I find It’s actually really easy to get along with 2 sessions,

          Microsoft developed RDP from T128 protocol which came from Data Connection Limited of London, who became Metaswitch a long time ago. More recently Microsoft bought Metaswitch.

    2. karlkarl Silver badge

      Re: Remote Desktop Connection

      SSH came in 1995 and is pretty much the industry standard.

      It took Microsoft to 2015 to port / implement on Windows (actually they paid NoMachine to do the port because Microsoft lacks developer talent these days).

      1. logicalextreme

        Re: Remote Desktop Connection

        And I still wouldn't call any of Microsoft's remote shell offerings good. They're a maze of twisted nonsense; too secure when you need to get something simple done and inexplicably lax when you need any semblance of authorisation.

        1. karlkarl Silver badge

          Re: Remote Desktop Connection

          Yeah good point. Once you ssh into a cmd or powershell you are fairly limited.

          No multi-plexing (tmux, screen) for one so you need to open up multiple connections like it is 1990 serial ports again.

          And if you do execute a decent POSIX shell (via gnuwin32, cygwin, busybox, etc) then the PTY emulation doesn't work great and you can't get interactive use of POSIX programs and windows programs seemlessly. All just a hacky mess.

  3. r0land
    Devil

    At last a text editor (or should I say IDE) for all those Quassel fanboys!

    Why run vi or emacs in screen or tmux on a shell server when you can fully enjoy the latest high tech wonders and disasters from Miro$oft????

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