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Comment by princevegeta89 | Hacker News Reader

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princevegeta89

VS Code, WSL, open-sourcing .NET framework?

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VS Code was a copycat of Atom. Dotnet copied Java.

I use and enjoy my microsoft stack (F#, Github, Azure, etc) but they definitely aren't "original".

It's like they built a nice large city where it's pleasant to live, but lacks the charm of a more intimate town.

I wouldn't call VSCode a copycat of atom. It was completely rethought editor built for extensibility and flexibility that brought the huge ass community together to contribute to it. The remote container support is a major innovation. No other IDE supports it so well even to this day.

Atom is a slow ass editor that was copied from Sublime Text but also failed to fix its own shit which was the reason it died.

>I wouldn't call VSCode a copycat of atom.

C'mon, Electron was literally built for atom. They took the literally framework atom was running on and built a me-too editor

Agreed, but the metoo editor still has had so many unique features vs atom though

And the iPhone copied the BlackBerry. Nothing is original. Everything is inspired by something.

There’s definitely more nuance and degree.

WSL original? Are you kidding? The 'L' stands for Linux: it just tries to copy Linux on Windows, providing a Linux environment on an OS that's entirely different. If anything, it's a reverse-copy of WINE.

I am not saying the Linux part of it was original, I meant that the first-class integration of a Linux layer into Windows as a type-1 hypervisor and setup-ready/teardown-ready mechanisms along with subsequential ability of having a real Linux kernel in addition to forwarding displays into the host (Windows) is definitely a novel push by Microsoft.

You kind of say the reason in your own comment. An official linux environment in an entirely different platform based on NT is definitely a fresh concept.

I still don't see what's novel about this. Linux was running Windows binaries directly through API translation long before, using WINE. And virtualization of entire OSes with VMware, VirtualBox, etc. was around long before WSL too. The only thing novel here was that MS was actually directly supporting running Linux, instead of poo-pooing it and making things intentionally difficult.

>> directly supporting running Linux

In my opinion this is what I consider novel.

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