Perhaps that is because of the very narrow focus on what IntelliJ does and the functionality of plugins is part of the core system of IntelliJ.
In my view, VSCode is a platform. It's unfortunate that they chose to use Node (its slow) but otherwise, its a great platform to develop extensions for.
For someone just getting into programming, it offers a great stepping stone and it can handle medium sized projects quite well.
The problem is, after installing bunch of plugins it is still no match for IntelliJ. If it was, why would I pay for it...
I want a plugin to parse the SQL query and do auto complete, check for syntax and column/table name errors according to the database I connect to through ssh tunneling but it's just a string in VS code. It also auto completes join columns by checking which foreign keys may match on the table I'm trying to join at the point of typing "JOIN [table name] ".
I want a plugin, so if I open a file, it checks the remote file and make sure it's not modified, so that I don't accidentally overwrite it in case someone has edited the remote file. (Yes, this sounds dumb but non programmers don't do like we do.)
Jump to definition should work like expected, reverse jump to uses from definition should also be there.
Formatting code with so many customizations on many languages including SQL, CSS with a hotkey or against a whole directory. Should the brackets go to next line or not, should there be spaces, should it be tabs or spaces etc. I see there's "prettier" etc but the supported languages and customizability aren't there.
My use case for the IDE should be narrower than others as I only use it for the web development but still it's a few miles ahead of VS code today.
But competition is good. I'm sure JetBrains may start sweating in 3 or so years when things actually start to be competitive but VS code is free and lighter.
> I see there's "prettier" etc but the supported languages and customizability aren't there.
Er, how? What language does VSCode not support formatters for with an appropriate, existing extension, including full customizability for the formatter?
Now, there's not an integrated UI for customization, instead relying on each formatters native configuration method, but that also makes the formatting configuration independent of the editor. For me that's a plus.
Perhaps that is because of the very narrow focus on what IntelliJ does and the functionality of plugins is part of the core system of IntelliJ.
In my view, VSCode is a platform. It's unfortunate that they chose to use Node (its slow) but otherwise, its a great platform to develop extensions for.
For someone just getting into programming, it offers a great stepping stone and it can handle medium sized projects quite well.