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Recently I've read about Microsoft Visual Studio Code. I work primarily with C and C++ languages on GNU/Linux. My question is whether Visual Studio Code is just a simple editor which uses whatever compiler exist in the platform, gcc in my case, as a background compiler or does it come with its own VS compiler?

JasonMArcher
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David Martínez
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    Visual Studio Code is just an editor, which features their intellisense thingy and some git and debugger integration. @Cyber he was asking about Visual Studio Code, which is just an editor. – rfreytag Apr 29 '15 at 20:22
  • Yeah, from what I understand it is, basically a scaled down version of the Microsoft Visual Studio. – rfreytag Apr 29 '15 at 20:29
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it asks about features of a product in development and as such is very likely to get outdated in the future and thus less useful. The better source for information on what VS Code is would be the product web site. – jpw Jul 22 '15 at 12:46
  • Meta-question: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/300186/close-reason-guidance – Deduplicator Jul 25 '15 at 14:35
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    This question makes little sense. Surely it is trivial for you to read the product documentation to understand whether it is delivered with a compiler or you have to provide your own. Should Stack Overflow host a variety of questions, all taking the form of "what features exist in product X"? Please explain what research you've done yourself, and state clearly why it is you feel that the Stack Overflow community is best suited for your attempt to obtain this information, as opposed to e.g. the product documentation itself. – Peter Duniho Jul 26 '15 at 05:28
  • **Dear future reader**: Please note, that `Visual Studio Code` is a product in active development and most answers in this thread are *close to three years old* now and contain **outdated and wrong information**. If you're interested in the current feature set of Visual Studio Code, have a look at their homepage: https://code.visualstudio.com – Marcus Mangelsdorf Mar 15 '18 at 15:59

8 Answers8

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Visual Studio Code is just an editor, which features their intellisense thingy and some git and debugger integration.

EDIT: more info here: https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs

rfreytag
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    Unfortunately, it doesn't feature intellisense for C/C++, only syntax highlighting: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages EDIT: no debugger integration for C/C++ either. The git integration is really nice though! Seems more designed for web applications, the debugger works for node.js – Alfredo Gimenez Apr 30 '15 at 19:09
  • so codeblock || codelite || Devc++ are better than Visual Studio Code? – Fennekin Sep 23 '15 at 18:23
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    I don't believe it is accurate to say it is just an editor. Right Now It is neither (Visual Studio or Eclipse) Nor (NotePad ++ or Sublime). It is somewhere in between. it runs on a PC or MAC or ,Linux. in Connect Microsoft announced that now it supports extensions. it now supports simple debugging for Node and Asp.net WebAPI. It certainly supports things like Go To Definition for variables and Functions in JavaScript. call me a conspiracy theorist. but I believe Erich Gamma is essentially building the foundation for a new generation visual studio. – Ehsan Samani Nov 19 '15 at 19:33
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    C++ intellisense is supported by plugin: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/austin.code-gnu-global (I haven't used yet) – Joon Hong Dec 19 '15 at 03:57
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It is more of a simple code editor than an IDE and it's primary focus is editing web code (Html, Javascript, CSS), TypeScript, and C#. It provides advanced 'IDE like' features for these languages, but more basic features for other languages (syntax highlighting).

Also, see What is the Visual Studio Code editor built on

Community
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Sevin7
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  • It's just an editor? It cannot compile programs like Java? – RoCkDevstack Feb 01 '16 at 15:03
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    It's actually a pretty good css editor. I downloaded it to work on some C#, but I use it mostly for CSS. It doesn't compile C# or any language, it's just an editor. – Halfstop Apr 05 '16 at 19:53
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As per VentureBeat

The new Visual Studio Code software is available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. It packs code completion, Git integration, linting, and sophisticated debugging capability. And it works with a wide range of languages.

“You can use this tool to be able to build modern web and cloud applications, with fantastic support for ASP.NET, Node.js, and TypeScript,”

More info here

Saagar Elias Jacky
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    sounds interesting... until "fantastic support for ASP.NET, Node.js, and TypeScript". not for me, thanks – Javier Apr 29 '15 at 20:29
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Visual Studio Code is free, cross platform, super fast and lightweight code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux and OS X. Since a lot of developers use windows as their development environment, but there are also lots of developers using Linux and Mac. So, Visual studio code is for them. Though, you can also use it on windows. Since ASP.NET 5 is also cross platform as having a code editor on linux and mac makes sense. Recently ASP.NET 5 RC1 was released and please give a read to What’s new in ASP.NET 5 RC1 and RC2 and if you are new to ASP.NET 5 then read Quick summary of what’s changed in ASP.NET 5. and ASP.NET 5 is now ASP.NET Core 1.0

Visual studio code is based on Electron framework, which is used to build cross platform desktop application using web technologies.

James Gower
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Sorry, can't see what use Visual Studio Code is for anything other than javascript programmers, unless you just like seeing your C++/Perl/Java code in pretty colours.

To answer your questions directly:

Yes, it is just a simple editor.

No, it does not use whatever compiler exists in the platform, gcc, or any other C++ compiler. It won't compile your C++ code, full stop.

No, it does not come with its own VS compiler, except for (apparently) "ASP.NET, Node.js, or TypeScript".

But it is the first cross-platform development tool in the Visual Studio family, for a certain definition of the phrase "development tool".

David I
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  • It's not a simple editor at all! it includes refactoring, intellisense and debugging support for some language besides JavaScript like TypeScript and C# and they are adding more and more so the aim of Visual Studio Code is to be an editor but with some IDE features. Unfortunately C++ support is indeed just syntax coloring but I think that at some point they will add support for it and other languages. There's already extensions for more languages like Go and debugging support for PHP. – iam3yal Jan 12 '16 at 23:35
  • I am quite confident you can change the tasks.json to compile with C++. For example, if you have a Makefile in your folder, than you can use the makefile extension to compile. – andrea Jan 20 '16 at 04:48
  • And just to be verbose, just see Section 3 here: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/markdown#_compiling-markdown-into-html – andrea Jan 20 '16 at 04:55
  • @andrea Even notepad++ is not simple text editor in your opinion? It also supports a lot plugins and you may compile your code in it.... Going forward, all "simple editors" with plugin support are not simple editors.... – nosbor Jan 25 '16 at 22:29
  • And you think I really care to start a pointless argument? Try again – andrea Jan 26 '16 at 02:21
  • Just to update, C++ support is in the work and it's coming! :) – iam3yal Feb 13 '16 at 01:06
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Use Visual Studio Code Tasks to execute program to compile or make.

chmike
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Although it's not mentioned by Microsoft,it appears that vscode is a clone of the ZED ide/text editor. What makes ZED unique is a set of principles designed to "reduce the cognitive load" of developing.

About the only important features I've found which vs code does not share with ZED is the auto-save feature and VIM keyboard bindings. [EDIT: turns out auto-save is supported by off by default.] Nearly everything else it has is copied there. While lacking those important features does reduce vs code's utility, the fact that it works across environments, has minimal window dressing, split panels, user editable configuration and is based on a node.js engine, makes it a very usable cross language editor.

Obviously, if you are an old-school windows/asp.net/.net sort of developer you have no need for something like vs code or zed since you stay in Visual Studio all the time. However, for the enlightened few who are just at home on mac or linux and who use python, node.js, json, c#, typescript etc interchangeably a light-weight, fast, cross platform code editor is essential. Having these as options makes many tasks easy, faster and more concise.

mcstar
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according to Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Code

Visual Studio Code is a source code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux and macOS. It includes support for debugging, embedded Git control, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, and code refactoring. It is also customizable, so users can change the editor's theme, keyboard shortcuts, and preferences. It is free and open-source,[5][6] although the official download is under a proprietary license.[4]

Visual Studio Code is based on Electron, a framework which is used to deploy Node.js applications for the desktop running on the Blink layout engine. Although it uses the Electron framework,[7] the software is not a fork of Atom, it is actually based on Visual Studio Online's editor (codename "Monaco").[8]

Mahesh
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