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Comment by dmitryminkovsky | Hacker News Reader

For all the love Microsoft has been getting these days, I still don’t get how I’m supposed to write C# or F# without Visual Studio and Windows. Am I missing something? VSCode doesn’t support these languages, right? I’m a person who spent a long time trying to write Java in Vim, but switched to IntelliJ and wouldn’t want to write C#/F# without some comparable IDE.

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F# in VS Code: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/get-started/g...

F# in .NET CLI: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/get-started/g...

C# in VS Code: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tutorials/with-...

Supported Linux versions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/linux-prerequis...

Supported macOS versions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/macos-prerequis...

Rider's also an option: https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/

Thank you for these links. I will look at them! But I am wondering qualitatively, along the lines of whb07’s sibling answer: is the experience good? Is it as good as on Visual Studio?

VS Code doesn't work for the older .NET Framework stuff (pre .NET Core).

As for doing .NET Core stuff, it depends a lot on your setup of both Code & Visual Studio. Code has some nice features that you would need extensions or an upper tier VS version to get. Code can be faster at times as well.

At the end of the day it is a different experience with a few pros & a few cons. It will greatly depend on the way you program.

> VS Code doesn't work for the older .NET Framework stuff (pre .NET Core).

This is not true for F#.

C# was usable in VS Code even 3 years ago

How is it these days? Is it “usable” or actually something you want to and enjoy using? Will I be left wanting Visual Studio? I mean I really enjoy IntelliJ, it makes programming Java like slicing butter. But I do want to try F#, people talk so highly of it.

I work in VS Code (backed by Omnisharp language server) and I like it more than Visual Studio (it seems to be faster and has some good extensions). But it's not the same and does not contain all the features (and all extensions). Sometimes it annoys me that the debugger does not work as well. Other things that may annoy you is that you can't install R# and that VS Code basically ignores your solution file and uses directory structure.

My background is mostly .NET and web. I like VS Code a lot for JS/TS, but I hesitate to recommend it for C#. Using it about a year ago, I felt like I was missing a lot of the power of "real" Visual Studio and many language features were fairly buggy on my Mac.

Intellisense was working 100%, but I stopped using it after that because I switched platforms. I don't believe it's worse today, VS Code as an editor is a joy to use (I use it with TypeScript).

> I really enjoy IntelliJ, it makes programming Java like slicing butter.

In that case, I think you want an actual IDE and VS Code is not that. The options you have for .Net are Visual Studio and Rider (which is from the same company as IntelliJ and shares a lot of code with it).

It (well, OmniSharp) is 95%. The 5% can be pretty frustrating (such as the lack of override autocomplete).

I actually find the F# experience using VS Code + Ionide plugin in a Mac beyond what I’d ever thought was possible without something like a full blown ide.

The maintainers of Ionide also just got Microsoft $$ so that’s even better news.

But working with F# and it’s strong types while at the same being able to write something similar to Python should be a giant selling point to anyone.

If you’re on a Mac or linux just download the .net core sdk and you’re ready to go

VS Code supports both languages. Check out Ionide for F# support. You can also use JetBrains Rider. Visual Studio also works on macOs btw and if nothing satisfies your taste then you can always just use a plain text editor because all you need to build, run and test your code is provided by the dotnet CLI.

You can use Rider which is a very good crossplatform JetBrains IDE. I found it very fast too (I use it on Fedora in my laptop)

Rider is in some ways better than VS. If you have moderately large solutions and a powerful desktop, you will frequently be butting up against the 32-bit memory limit of VS, especially if you tear off any editor windows to put on another monitor (I don't know why this exacerbates the problem so badly, but I've been seeing it steady since VS 2013). Once you get around 2GB of memory in use, things drag to a crawl.

I recently switched to Rider after finally giving up on the performance issues in Visual Studio - VS is a fantastic IDE, but I'm sick of the perf issues and having my laptop permanently sounding like it's going to take off...

After setting up the theme and font and such... I love Rider! It's extremely customisable, and actually has some features than VS doesn't. And of course it's backed by ReSharper too. Highly recommended it!

>I’m a person who spent a long time trying to write Java in Vim, but switched to IntelliJ and wouldn’t want to write C#/F# without some comparable IDE.

Rider is the comparative option for you. I wouldn't waste much time on VS Code, personally.

Plugin for F# VSCode: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Ionide.I...

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