When I started in development I did it with Java. At first, I use Netbeans, then I jump to Eclipse, then to Netbeans again, and then I discovered IntelliJ IDEA. I stay there for a while, but over the years it become heavy for my little machine (back then I had a Laptop with an E-350 APU, and 8GB of RAM).
When I started in web development, I did it with AngularJS. I started with IntelliJ WebStorm because it was a great tool to develop with Java, but I started to realize that it wan't a good tool for web development at all. I then jump between multiple popular text editors, until VSCode was launch.
Personally did not care about all the Microsoft is not open source thing, and was a early adopter. Now I look VSCode, and I can do almost all the things that I did with IDEA, but create a particular file for a particular situation, but I have snippets for that.
So... Does IDEs have earned more power to do things? Does text editors are IDEs now? What is the actual difference between an IDE (with a bunch of build-in plugins) and a text editor (with a bunch of user downloaded plugins)?
Top comments (2)
It's about intents. Plugins bridge the gap though.
Text Editor: Make it very, very easy to edit files (fast to open, even large files, should never stall to index)
IDE: Made it easy or possible to write, compile, execute, and debug programs.
Every IDE has a text editor and a text editor with plugins can be built to do nearly everything an IDE can do.
The text-editor-as-an-IDE is nothing new or unique to VSCode; emacs and vim paved the path.
But all the hype I've seen for VSCode, it seems to have really found some optimal blend on the spectrum from Notepad to Visual Studio.
VS Code is a "mini-IDE," I reckon.