So I started my coding journey with Python about 2 years ago. I primarily used IDLE which was super bare bones but was perfect for my needs.

I’m now toying around with Javascript with eventual aspirations to learn C# and maybe something else (Golang maybe, C++ is intimidating). I completed codecademy.com’s course on Javascript, have been running through some algo training on codewars, been playing a little BitBurner, but now I want to actually try to develop my own stuff.

Looks like Visual Studio has an environment that supports Javascript, Python, and C# in one place. How is it? What are some of the positives and negatives of choosing to use Visual Studio moving forward?

  • _ParallaxMax_
    3•2 years ago

    I used Visual Studio Code for a while and it was pretty good, it was able to do near everything that I wanted it to do.
    However, at some point I kept running into some issues with the autocompletion function (intellisense) and the documentation it shows on functions you’re typing. These popups appear underneath the line you edit and kept obscuring code that I wanted to be able to see.
    I could not find a setting to move these popups without disabling Intellisense in its entirety, which annoyed me to no end.

    That’s why I finally bit the bullet and switched to EMACS a few months ago and while it’s a little less stable, it allows me to configure whatever and however I want to configure. In addition, it allows me to do many things other than programming in the same application. I read my emails in EMACS, I keep to-do lists and agenda in EMACS, I (used to) read Reddit from EMACS. There are lots of possibilities.

    EMACS by itself is a very barebones experience, I installed DOOM EMACS, a framework which installs and configures many things for you out-of-the-box, which is very handy for getting started. One potential caveat is that DOOM is designed for vim keybindings which can be difficult to get accustomed to (I love them, though). The vim keybindings can be disabled, though I’m sure there are also other frameworks which take a non-vim approach.

    It can be difficult to get started in, but for me EMACS is extremely rewarding.

    Edit: I program in Typescript with React, Java, PostgreSQL and Rust all from within EMACS