this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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Programming

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I use vscode for my personal projects (c++ and a fully open source stack, compiling for both Linux and Windows).

I'm using the proprietary version of vscode (via the aur) for the plugin repository, but I've always envied the open source version...

Are there any tools that have made you excited?

Bonus points if they have some support for compiling with MSVC (or if you can convince me to ditch it for something else).

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Pycharm is great for Python. The style enforcement is fantastic.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

I really credit my present strength with Python, in at least a small part, to PyCharm. Really a great IDE for Python projects. It irritates me, if anything, how much more flexible VSCode can be for non-Python stuff. I end up using VSCode.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Emacs. Everything else feels lobotomised

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

VS Code at work, Zed at home.

Despite Zed crashing my laptop every once in a while, it's been a refreshing change-up from VS Code.

I use a vim extension in both btw...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Doesn't Zed have a vim mode by default?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Okay, so I’m not using an extension in Zed* (but am using vim mode btw)

https://zed.dev/docs/vim

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

I don't know what the best IDE is, but I know what the best text editor is.

https://github.com/tsoding/ded

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Vim when I can, and when I can't, Neovim with plugins (LazyVim). Both are fast. I have had troubles with Neovim and configuration, and it does some things that really annoy me (like autoclosing parentheses - it just messes up everything). Honestly, the only feature that I really need is Go To Definition.

But vim - I absolutely love it. I started using it nearly 20 years ago and it still does everything one could want if you're willing to learn the keymaps and commands. Macros, ci), block indentation and so on. It's even great for editing XML. If the codebases I'm working on these days weren't so large and complicated, I would still be using it with very little configuration in my .vimrc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

That is not a vanilla NeoVim feature. This is done by some plugin of LazyVim like Josh suggested.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

I don't use lazyvim, but I found the "auto pairs" plugin you can try to disable

https://www.lazyvim.org/plugins/coding#minipairs

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I use a different IDE for each language in which I code

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I use vscodium and it is available on AUR (vscodium / vscodium-bin). Supposedly there are some plugins not available for it, but i don't use a ton of plugins and the ones I used in vscode were available in vscodium when i switched.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

@starshipwinepineapple @rklm I mainly use Theia IDE, similar and compatible to vscode extensions, but not tied to microsoft

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

Jetbrains IDE's are top tier (but resource hungry). A text editor with some plugins is fine for smaller projects, like zed, sublime text or neovim

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Xcode because I build iOS apps.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I've tried lots of options, and I still go back to vscode.

I've extensively used neovim and it has been my main IDE for years, but I got tired of having to spend entire afternoons configuring it. And I had too many total breaks, that had led me to recently abandon it as an IDE, still use it sometimes but much less. It relies on too many plugins, which makes breaks more common imho.

I tried helix. But features are far from what I expect for an IDE, even a modal command line one.

On the gui territory, I tried Lapce, but it's still buggy and lacks features. Development pace is slow enough so I don't consider it could become my ide in the near future, I have hopes for it, but not much as it could easily become abandoned before it's usable.

I wanted to try Zed, but they seems to have a preference for macOS, which may have sense in the US but here I don't remember the last developer I saw using a mac. There's now a linux version, which I may try at some point, but some people commented that while in a better state than Lapce it's not still a production ready option for an text-editor-IDE. Also the company behind it doesn't inspire trust to me. There's something about it that smells fishy, I cannot quite put my finger on what, but there's something.

There are more options, some obscure, some old, some paid. For instance I usually hear good things about jetbrains ide. I tried intellij community and I'm not impressed, it's slightly better than eclipse, but it's not on the level of visual studio for dotnet. I'm not a student and I don't get paid for my hobby developments so paid options are a no-go.

So it is visual studio code for me. Sometimes I still use neovim, as I really like modal editors, and vim/neovim is my go to text editor anyways. I'm due to try emacs, and I'm hopeful for the future of both helix and Lapce, though I manage my emotions as I've know too many projects that just never deliver, so I'm cautious.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

That looks interesting, I see it's been discontinued 2 years ago though, is there a maintained fork that you use?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Unix is my IDE, vim is my editor.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Based.
The universe is my IDE, my hands are my editor.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The Unix shell remains an excellent IDE.

A huge array of text- and data-manipulation tools, with more available through the standard package manager in my operating system.

Add in a powerful text editor like Vim or Emacs, and nothing can beat this IDE.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Yep. When everything about your IDE (unix) is programmable, it makes "modern" IDEs seem quite quaint.

Personally I make extensive use of https://f1bonacc1.github.io/process-compose/launcher/ to orchestrate a bunch of different shell scripts that trigger based on file changes (recompiling, restarting servers, re-running tests, etc.). Vim just reads from files as needed. It's lightning fast, no bloat, and a world-class editing experience.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

NeoVim. Once I looked at vim as an IDE, I won't look back

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

My three IDE’s of choice in order of preference:

  1. EMacs: ultimative workhorse which can do many more - especially with org-mode (however, time intensive to configure which is why I used also ChatGPT to get it done)

  2. VSCodium: easy to manage almost anything due to its huge number of extensions

  3. Vim: don’t know, sometimes I feel the need to work with Vim and it’s many shortcuts

All are free and open source.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Lately the most frequent ide/editors I've been using are sublime text, eclipse, and teXworks. I'd like to replace sublime text, maybe go back to emacs or give neovim a try. I'll probably get rid of eclipse once I can replace the ee containers with self contained apps, I used vs code for a bit with java and it was fine but the ee server container integration wasn't great, this was a couple years ago I last tried though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

VSCod(ium). Jetbrains IDEs are arguably better (I've used this some in the past), but I like OSS and having all languages in one IDE (even though some languages may not be integrated as well as others).

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