Don Jayamanne, creator of Python extension for VS Code, joins Microsoft | Hacker News Reader

Don Jayamanne, creator of Python extension for VS Code, joins Microsoft

blogs.msdn.microsoft.com

90 pointssmortaz42 comments

This is great news! VSCode has become my defacto editor across all of my environments, Linux, macOS, and Windows (10).

With a small amount of background setup that differs between environments I have essentially the exact same thing across all of my environments, and everything 'just works.'

I'm a big fan of VSCode, and it's awesome to see Microsoft putting heavy effort into it.

On the note of this specific plugin -- it's really good! I'd also suggest this plugin - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=felixfbe... - if you like PHP. I switch between PHP/Python a lot and these two plugins have made VSCode great for my workflow.

Why not Emacs? Just curious.

I use it because I prefer editors that don't require relevant mental overhead (and for me, the text-editing "efficiency" is the least relevant part of the editor experience). Simplicity is a big factor for me in editor choice. I used Sublime previously, but VSCode won out with significantly better intellisense support – this python extension for example. The language servers have been awesome.

EMACS is not a good editor wverything else about EMACS is great but the editor and shortcuts are the worst :) That is why I use Spacemacs if I am trying out something in EMACS. I am actually thinking that NeoVim will be inside of EMACS soon.

Startup time, designed from the start as cross platform (i.e. not _ported_ to windows) , sane default configuration and keybindings, customizable using a language that a lot of people already know?

I like emacs (and spacemacs), and I really appreciate all the ideas that have come from it. But it's not easy to get started with.

Startup time can be fixed by running Emacs as a daemon on boot. (Not sure if that's possible with Windows) For keybindings you can just use evil and get vim keybindings. But yeah, Emacs is not easy to get started with, though I feel it's worth spending time getting used to it.

VS Code uses Javascript the same way Emacs uses Lisp. For people more familiar with Javascript, it is not a bad idea. And it has a very active community that has created lots of plugins.

Personally, I do prefer Emacs, if only because by now I have accumulated ten years worth of customizing. But I have tried VS Code a few times, and I can see why people would like it. (There is a plugin that gives you Emacs-style keybindings.)

technically it uses typescript :P

Actually, technically it uses Javascript since that’s what Typescript compiles to and since Typescript is a superset of Javascript...all Javascript is Typescript. xD

technically technically and technically we all compile to asm since v8 does that on the fly and technically technically it is 1's and 0's. Hence my reasoning for saying typescript ;p

I guess works out of the box experience.

Happy to see this hit the front page! If you have any thoughts about how you'd like us to improve Python support in VS Code please let us know.. with the additional resources we're hoping to accelerate the development quite a bit.

I'd like autocomplete that I know what it's going to do. The current plugin is inconsistent, with better results when you type more slowly.

If I hit "tab" somewhere besides the beginning of a line, I should get autocomplete options. If it hasn't pondered enough in the background to give me autocomplete options yet, it should unobtrusively tell me so. It should not insert spaces instead.

The game changer for Python VSCode would be to run Jupyter Notebooks natively and can save/read .ipynb files. (The current Jupyter extension by Don allows code to be run as cells, but doesn’t save cell output/allow text cells)

YES! I'd love to see the native Jupyter and REPL experience improve as well.

That was tge reason I switched over to PyCharm and back to regular, browser based notebooks.

I get this weird issue when there is an exception - vs code debugging just stops and there is no exception message in the output/debug/... window etc. Perhaps simplifying the various windows would be helpful.

We don't have directly control over most of the Windows (they are controlled by VS Code itself). But feel free to file an issue at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python.

I love VSCode. I don't understand what's Microsoft's incentive is to put all this money behind it (by hiring external contributors and staffing the project). Would love to know, if someone can chime in.

> I don't understand what's Microsoft's incentive is to put all this money behind it

Well, that's easy, marketing. By creating a decent cross platform text editor and getting people behind it, they create a prescience on all 3 major operating systems and may attract people to check out their other offerings.

VSCode has raised msft's profile with devs not using the msft stack. If they now add like azure integration or something, I can imagine VSCode driving traffic to azure.

Great suggestion. But...

Microsoft has an annoying "in your face" bundling precedent. (Windows vs. IE, Windows Store. Renaming hell: windows live..editor, messenger, essentials, msn..messenger, One..drive, Xbox..music)

It should be okay, if the VS code team can integrate Azure without management or marketing taking over. Else VS code would become Azure code and it'll nag you to login to your Azure account on every startup.

I don't know if they'll do it, but I'd love for them to offer a hosted VSCode product. It seems technically fairly feasible.

Not MS but there is a project in the works for roughly that(uses same base Monaco editor). Current version of VS code does actually rely a lot on file system stuff.

https://github.com/theia-ide/theia

This is a great suggestion and I hope that VS Code gets there (and with it Python support). Meanwhile, for an approximation check out:

https://notebooks.azure.com

Rumor has it that its successor, ie JupyterLab, may use the VS Code Editor as its code editor in the future.

Visual Studio Online, the predecessor product of VS Code, uses the Monaco code editor.

I think they just want to build on their ethos of being very developer-friendly; also that it could be some sort of a loss leader for them.

they could possibly want all your development toolchain and apps tied to their ecosystem, intertwined with linux and azure, so that the everything depends on their services.

Anyone using VS Code for C++? What is you setup, are you also using cmake?

Does anyone have opinions on how well Intellisense for python in VS code works in comparison to Jedi or PyCharm / Jetbrains' completion?

Worse than PyCharm. I miss PyCharm's completion. Not enough to put up with the rest of the PyCharm interface, but I miss it.

Would you (and others) be willing to have an extra 20 MB download to get better intellisense? We could potentially work with the PTVS team on better/faster intellisense, but it would require writing that code in .NET which would mean downloading a private copy of .NET for use by the extension.

Personally, I definitely would. Disk space is not really a particularly limited commodity for me, and considering that VSCode's install footprint is already 200MB+, it's not really a problem.

Of course, it's always possible to add some kind of setting for better intellisense, but I suspect most people don't really care too much about the disk size. What I would care about is performance impact/CPU usage.

Another potential issue for me is if adding PVTS would force the extension to be closed source like the C++ extension.

TL;DR: Definitely

PTVS itself is open source so there's no worry there (our whole team does it's work as open source wherever it makes sense, and in this instance it would).

Didn't realize that. In that case, sounds awesome!

Without hesitation, seems like a very worthwhile tradeoff (for any language IMO)

>Would you (and others) be willing to have an extra 20 MB download to get better intellisense?

Absolutely.

Yes, without hesitation.

Can confirm, VS Code's completion is okay-ish. You will get appropriate docstrings and autocompletion when it works, but it definitely has a long way to go.

Thanks for the feedback - it's an area we'll definitely be looking at closely.

It uses Jedi under the hood, works ok for me. Sometimes it can't figure out the type, but that's when type annotations come handy.

That's truly cool.

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