Now it's as good a time as ever to try out Lazy Vim. Came to it from Lunar Vim and it just works.
Working with anything is a breeze.
I'm just not too familiar with refactoring tooling and how to configure it, but there's rarely any reason for me to use something more complicated than sed, and in those occasions I can just use ast-grep.
I noticed this the other day when I installed VSCodium on my new Windows box. I had a functional setup for one day, then the next day I couldn't install a language extension I direly needed.
It's left a very sour taste in my mouth. I've used Emacs for ages and despite being a much more niche editor, it's never been so hard-dependent on centralized repositories, and the centralized repositories it does have (ELPA/MELPA) are apparently a lot more reliable than OpenVSX. Installing Emacs packages manually from source is a breeze, doing so with VSC is masochistic.
VSC is not really "open source" in any meaningful sense. It is just plainly unusable if you don't do things the way Microsoft wants you to. I do respect the VSCodium devs for trying to make VSC more properly open, but it does feel like a futile effort.
For context, Open VSX is run by the Eclipse foundation, which also develops the Eclipse Theia editor, which is basically a clone of VS Code (not a fork, like VS Codium).
The Open VSX registry is open source (https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx) and self-hostable, although I have no experience with that. I assume it's possible to host your own instance with the extensions you want instead of relying on the free public instance.
Personally I'm more of a Sublime guy, but people looking for an open VSC alternative should consider Theia over VSC forks. It seems like the smarter long term investment if you want to get out from Microsoft's control.
I mean, it's Microsoft. We all knew that to an extent going in.
Google, on the other hand, pretended to be the FOSS crusader while setting themselves up for a ton of vendor lock-in that would not only have gotten 90s MS convicted on antitrust, but Bill Gates crucified on the National Mall.
There is not much to see on a server that is down, so let me share some free advice instead.
Visit Eclipse Theia in the mean time when you are serious about de-risking from VSCode. I think VSCodium is doing an uphill battle here, while Microsoft can't help them self being a sales company first. In Theia, everything is open and free of spyware. MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice.
EDIT:
1. Eclipse Theia is a different platform than Eclipse the Java IDE.
From my experience having attempted to migrate away from VSCodium (in the attempts to de-VSCode) and build atop Theia as a platform, there are few things to consider:
- The build system is finicky and can easily take hours to figure/fix.
- The error-reporting is severely lacking. You can be lost why something internal isn't working and go on a rabbit-trail with your favorite AI-copilot, etc.
- Documentation is lacking. You have to dive into the platform code to actually figure things out.
- This can be seen positively but there are quite a few new things being introduced regularly (especially AI-related) which, for a platform, isn't always ideal.
> Please note that a few parts of the VS Code extension API are only stubbed in Theia. Extensions will be installable, but some features might not work as expected.
Also, I thought Theia was a cloud IDE, and it seems like I was mostly right in that 2/3rds of their offering is (localhost:3000 & docker) but they also now apparently bundle it in Electron which I haven't tried
Note they say that most extensions are compatible, and those not listed as compatible might still be.
The API surface covers almost 100% that of vscode, I only see some AI integration API's that are stubbed, and that is because Theia has their own vision here and doesn't want to depend on MS.
The complete API compatibility list is here, the stubbed API's are not core imho:
> MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice.
Microsoft is partly to blame, but people have been warning about this over and over and over ad nauseam and people still choose to use VSCode. You couldn't even get people to not use the proprietary extensions for C/C++, Python and remote development.
The problem is that Microsoft dedicates enough resource to development that everybody else looks like a rounding error.
For example, anybody could have produced the Language Server Protocol, but nobody had the critical mass until Microsoft shoved it down everybody's throats.
Until somebody puts a significant amount of money behind an alternative, Microsoft is going to continue to win this battle.
(I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)
> (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)
The editor war is going as strong as ever, emacs vs vim will still be here in 20 years. Compared to 10 years ago, the amount of people using emacs and vim only grew, although VSCode growth was 1000x faster.
Theia is not a fork of vscode (even though it looks like it). It uses VSCode's code editor (Monoco) and is written from the ground up. Presumably allowing it to support extensions, that for example, vscode does not.
Thanks for the share. Yeah, building upon VSCode (MIT) is a stupid idea. Regarding OpenVSX, it was developed whilst I was at Gitpod and transferred to the Eclipse Foundation. It's been many years now, so my memory might be a little dated as to what came first, but OpenVSX/Gitpod/Thiea/Eclipse origins can all be traced back to https://www.typefox.io/.
Anyway. OpenVSX is classic XKCD https://xkcd.com/2347/ territory—run by a small crew of brilliant volunteers, but the entire world depends/freeloads upon them.
it's kind of wild -- none of the multimillion dollar VSCode forks (Cursor, windsurf) are working properly at the moment. It seems open-vsx is quite a vulnerable single point of failure. Searching extensions gives a 503.
Now it's as good a time as ever to try out Lazy Vim. Came to it from Lunar Vim and it just works.
Working with anything is a breeze.
I'm just not too familiar with refactoring tooling and how to configure it, but there's rarely any reason for me to use something more complicated than sed, and in those occasions I can just use ast-grep.
I noticed this the other day when I installed VSCodium on my new Windows box. I had a functional setup for one day, then the next day I couldn't install a language extension I direly needed.
It's left a very sour taste in my mouth. I've used Emacs for ages and despite being a much more niche editor, it's never been so hard-dependent on centralized repositories, and the centralized repositories it does have (ELPA/MELPA) are apparently a lot more reliable than OpenVSX. Installing Emacs packages manually from source is a breeze, doing so with VSC is masochistic.
VSC is not really "open source" in any meaningful sense. It is just plainly unusable if you don't do things the way Microsoft wants you to. I do respect the VSCodium devs for trying to make VSC more properly open, but it does feel like a futile effort.
For context, Open VSX is run by the Eclipse foundation, which also develops the Eclipse Theia editor, which is basically a clone of VS Code (not a fork, like VS Codium).
The Open VSX registry is open source (https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx) and self-hostable, although I have no experience with that. I assume it's possible to host your own instance with the extensions you want instead of relying on the free public instance.
Personally I'm more of a Sublime guy, but people looking for an open VSC alternative should consider Theia over VSC forks. It seems like the smarter long term investment if you want to get out from Microsoft's control.
I'm sure some (many?) will disagree with me but:
VSCode is Android. Or rather, VSCode's source is AOSP and the marketplace, plugins, etc are Google Play Services.
I say that with maximum derision.
you are correct. vscode (mit) is utterly evil - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43786380
I mean, it's Microsoft. We all knew that to an extent going in.
Google, on the other hand, pretended to be the FOSS crusader while setting themselves up for a ton of vendor lock-in that would not only have gotten 90s MS convicted on antitrust, but Bill Gates crucified on the National Mall.
A good analogy. I always felt a little dirty using VScode. Back to tmux, vim a few months back like it has been for the last 20 odd years.
as someone who has reversed the Google Play Services API, its utterly evil and you are correct that its about as far from open source as you can get
> VSCode is Android
Yes, an open source project that creates immense value, but fails to fulfill some purist fantasy.
Like have a working keyboard?
My android phone doesn't have a working keyboard?
You use stock Android Open Source keyboard, not closed-sourced Gboard? Can you type in Chinese?
There is not much to see on a server that is down, so let me share some free advice instead.
Visit Eclipse Theia in the mean time when you are serious about de-risking from VSCode. I think VSCodium is doing an uphill battle here, while Microsoft can't help them self being a sales company first. In Theia, everything is open and free of spyware. MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice.
EDIT:
1. Eclipse Theia is a different platform than Eclipse the Java IDE.
2. link: https://theia-ide.org/#theiaidedownload
From my experience having attempted to migrate away from VSCodium (in the attempts to de-VSCode) and build atop Theia as a platform, there are few things to consider:
- The build system is finicky and can easily take hours to figure/fix.
- The error-reporting is severely lacking. You can be lost why something internal isn't working and go on a rabbit-trail with your favorite AI-copilot, etc.
- Documentation is lacking. You have to dive into the platform code to actually figure things out.
- This can be seen positively but there are quite a few new things being introduced regularly (especially AI-related) which, for a platform, isn't always ideal.
https://theia-ide.org/docs/user_install_vscode_extensions/#c... (sigh)
> Please note that a few parts of the VS Code extension API are only stubbed in Theia. Extensions will be installable, but some features might not work as expected.
Also, I thought Theia was a cloud IDE, and it seems like I was mostly right in that 2/3rds of their offering is (localhost:3000 & docker) but they also now apparently bundle it in Electron which I haven't tried
Note they say that most extensions are compatible, and those not listed as compatible might still be.
The API surface covers almost 100% that of vscode, I only see some AI integration API's that are stubbed, and that is because Theia has their own vision here and doesn't want to depend on MS.
The complete API compatibility list is here, the stubbed API's are not core imho:
https://eclipse-theia.github.io/vscode-theia-comparator/stat...
Why in earth would they stain their efforts with the "eclipse" name. Screenshots look great!
> MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice.
Microsoft is partly to blame, but people have been warning about this over and over and over ad nauseam and people still choose to use VSCode. You couldn't even get people to not use the proprietary extensions for C/C++, Python and remote development.
The problem is that Microsoft dedicates enough resource to development that everybody else looks like a rounding error.
For example, anybody could have produced the Language Server Protocol, but nobody had the critical mass until Microsoft shoved it down everybody's throats.
Until somebody puts a significant amount of money behind an alternative, Microsoft is going to continue to win this battle.
(I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)
> (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)
The editor war is going as strong as ever, emacs vs vim will still be here in 20 years. Compared to 10 years ago, the amount of people using emacs and vim only grew, although VSCode growth was 1000x faster.
Why would I switch from vscodium to theia?
Theia is not a fork of vscode (even though it looks like it). It uses VSCode's code editor (Monoco) and is written from the ground up. Presumably allowing it to support extensions, that for example, vscode does not.
However, its early days.
Remember vs code is designed to fracture and the forks are an integral part of that. https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
Thanks for the share. Yeah, building upon VSCode (MIT) is a stupid idea. Regarding OpenVSX, it was developed whilst I was at Gitpod and transferred to the Eclipse Foundation. It's been many years now, so my memory might be a little dated as to what came first, but OpenVSX/Gitpod/Thiea/Eclipse origins can all be traced back to https://www.typefox.io/.
Anyway. OpenVSX is classic XKCD https://xkcd.com/2347/ territory—run by a small crew of brilliant volunteers, but the entire world depends/freeloads upon them.
it's kind of wild -- none of the multimillion dollar VSCode forks (Cursor, windsurf) are working properly at the moment. It seems open-vsx is quite a vulnerable single point of failure. Searching extensions gives a 503.
Is that any different from a GitHub/AWS outage?
Yes - no one is making 7 figures in order to keep OpenVSX online
Some VSCode forks. Others like Cursor don't use it.
Looking forward to the post-mortem of this outage.
#hugops