VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot

This piece of news follows that of Copilot being added in an "update" to LG TVs with no option to disable or opt out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46268844

I think some of the big features of VSCode are the extensions and, equivalently, the nice debug support. I just started using VSCode about a week ago thanks to moving to a project that uses scons as its primary supported build tool, and I've learned to hate scons and love VSCode over that time. The completely manual tasks/launch/etc stuff is kind of weird at first, but then becomes amazing and far more convenient, after you get used to it. And the 'debugger' (kind of weird to frame it that way as its extension based, like everything) is amazing - extremely fast, great visualizations, and so on.

How would vim compare?

I felt the same way about vim. I never had the patience to get started and configure everything to get the full benefits.

I just switched over to Omarchy for my personal OS and I know that it comes with a pre-configured neovim (using lazyvim) setup that looks like a fully-fledged IDE.

I personally have been using Helix as my editor at home and work. The fact that everything generally works on download is what got me using it.

> I had tried many times to switch to vim/emacs and the initial barrier to get a workable system always kept me from pushing forward

What’s that initial barrier? Both Vim and emacs has great documentation that includes a tutorial, a guide, and a reference.

What people often defines as workable system is replicating their old editors instead of learning the current one. Like adding a file tree on the side

I think many people don't know or underestimate Zed. Native, fast, with extensions, with Vim mode support.

  I had tried many times to switch to vim/emacs and the initial barrier
  to get a workable system always kept me from pushing forward.

Intellicode being (officially) deprecated will impact VSCodium, yes. I too am more concerned about copilot being further “needed” or required in my VSCode fork. It’s already the biggest pain in the butt I’ve ever had to deal with in the context of VSCodium. I am not excited for the future.

I didn’t think it was even possible to install proprietary microsoft extensions in VSCodium, how is that related to the version of the editor and how would it affect VSCodium?

even then using vscodium does not free you from the grasps. vscode by design is designed to fracture - see https://ghuntley.com/fracture

Same boat. I hope they don't downstream nonsense like this.

Unfortunately, people often resist change and prefer to stick with what they know. Maybe a small percentage of people will look for alternatives but it'd be a drop in the ocean.

Given the number of vs code competitors, I think "extinguish" maybe on the other side this time.

if they waited another year or so they could have killed off jetbrains

patience is a virtue

They can try but they no longer have the power to do that.

It's actually in the third paragrapth of the article:

> The classic IntelliSense with language server for the used language is still free – but without AI support.

No, IntelliCode is an extension:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualSt...

I've been having a very good time with Zed. Great vim motion support, and fast to the point where using VSCode feels like driving a semi truck by comparison.

https://zed.dev

LazyVim is about as easy as it gets in the Vim space for a fully-fledged (but customizable) editor.

https://www.lazyvim.org/installation

Then run `LazyExtras` and you get a prompt that shows things like:

  Recommended Languages: (2)
    ○ lang.docker    mason.nvim  nvim-lspconfig  nvim-treesitter  none-ls.nvim  nvim-lint
    ○ lang.toml    nvim-lspconfig

[lang.docker and lang.toml are examples of things you're selecting, the list after is what is being installed and configured for that thing]

For things like integrating a debugger, or to run your tests directly inline from the editor might require more customisation though.

If you really only care about syntax highlighting then nearly any code editor will do. Even nano supports it, it’s just disabled by default.

If you want something powerful yet easy to pick up, you might want to look at e.g. Zed (GUI IDE), Sublime Text (GUI editor), or Micro (TUI editor). If you don’t mind a learning curve, Vim/Neovim and Emacs are excellent choices. But there’s a lot of other options out there, like Gedit, Kate, BBEdit, Notepad++, etc. depending on your platform of choice.

I'm a Kate zealot, if you're on Linux it's great with some LSP servers. The plugins/extensions are nice. There are also macOS and Windows builds.

For the terminal, micro is nice if you're used to GUI editors.

For TUI, Helix has a lovely out-of-the-box experience. What little config there is (two TOML files) is relatively easy to grasp. The main barrier you'll face is setting up your LSPs, which need to be installed manually. (Luckily, there's `uvx -q` for Python LSPs.)

For GUI, Zed is also really nice, has a great Vim mode, and auto-installs anything you might need. It loses a couple of points to VS Code on account of not being arbitrarily extensible, although that can also be seen as a plus, as it prevents extensions from randomly slowing everything down.

I’ve been using Zed [1] for some time now. They are also pretty AI focused so it may only be a matter of time, but so far I’ve been able to disable all of the AI interactions.

[1] https://zed.dev/

VSCodium has been my go-to. VS Code was great for a bit but (even long before this) it was already suffering from the cancer that is "being a microsoft product" and it was being bloated to death like everything else they ship, but VSCodium seems to keep enough distance to be immune. Will it stay that way? Who's to say. I hope so though.