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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Code Collaboration
  4. Text Editor
  5. CodeMirror vs Visual Studio Code

CodeMirror vs Visual Studio Code

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

CodeMirror
CodeMirror
Stacks747
Followers232
Votes15
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code
Stacks186.5K
Followers169.1K
Votes2.3K
GitHub Stars178.2K
Forks35.9K

CodeMirror vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Key differences between CodeMirror and Visual Studio Code

  1. Coding Environment: CodeMirror is primarily a browser-based code editor that is embedded into a webpage, allowing users to edit and view code directly in their browser. On the other hand, Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a standalone desktop application that provides a comprehensive code editing and development environment with features like debugging, version control integration, and extensions support.

  2. Supported Languages and Features: CodeMirror supports a wide range of programming languages out of the box, but it lacks some advanced features like automatic code completion, debugging, and integrated terminal. VS Code, on the other hand, supports a vast array of programming languages and offers extensive features including code completion, debugging, integrated terminal, source control management, and more.

  3. Customization Abilities: CodeMirror allows for easy customization, enabling developers to tweak various aspects of the editor's behavior and appearance. However, the level of customization may be limited compared to VS Code, which provides a highly customizable environment with a powerful extension system. Users can install a variety of extensions to enhance their editing experience and add new functionality.

  4. Performance and Size: CodeMirror is lightweight and optimized for fast performance, making it suitable for embedding in web applications with limited resources. VS Code, being a desktop application, may have a larger memory footprint and require more system resources. However, it offers a more powerful set of features and functionality.

  5. Integration with External Tools and Services: CodeMirror can be easily integrated into web applications, allowing developers to build interfaces that incorporate code editing capabilities. VS Code, on the other hand, provides seamless integration with various external tools and services, such as version control systems (Git), build systems, debuggers, and cloud platforms, making it a preferred choice for professional developers working on complex projects.

  6. Community and Support: CodeMirror has a smaller user community compared to VS Code, which has gained significant popularity among developers worldwide. As a result, VS Code benefits from a larger and more active community, offering extensive documentation, tutorials, online forums, and a wide range of community-developed extensions and themes.

In summary, CodeMirror is a lightweight browser-based code editor suitable for web applications, while Visual Studio Code is a feature-rich desktop application for code editing and development with extensive language support, customization options, and integrations with external tools and services.

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Advice on CodeMirror, Visual Studio Code

Kamaleshwar
Kamaleshwar

Software Engineer at Dibiz Pte. Ltd.

Jul 8, 2020

Decided

Visual Studio Code became famous over the past 3+ years I believe. The clean UI, easy to use UX and the plethora of integrations made it a very easy decision for us. Our gripe with Sublime was probably only the UX side. VSCode has not failed us till now, and still is able to support our development env without any significant effort.

Goland being paid, as well as built only for Go seemed like a significant limitation to not consider it.

1.36M views1.36M
Comments
Samriddhi
Samriddhi

Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling

Sep 26, 2020

Decided

Lightweight and versatile. Huge library of extensions that enable you to integrate a host of services to your development environment. VS Code's biggest strength is its library of extensions which enables it to directly compete with every single major IDE for almost all major programming languages.

1.04M views1.04M
Comments
410-Ventures
410-Ventures

Nov 18, 2020

Review

PyCharm (pro)

  • great editor designed specifically for Python and python apps
  • complex (good for configurability, bad for simplicity)
  • expensive ($200 first year, $120 third year)

PyCharm (free)

  • same as above but without a REST client or support for other web development tools (which you will likely end up using)
  • ok to get your feet wet (you can always upgrade later) Full comparison: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html

VS Code (free)

  • Configurable "IDE" with support for most modern languages
  • TONS of simple-to-install extensions that add functionality
  • Great docs and UI

Sublime Text (free)

  • one of the most minimal editors out there
  • it just works

It's really down to personal preference. But I would recommend downloading all of the FREE editors, getting setup in each, and keeping only the ones you like.

My personal choice for web development is VS Code but I started with Pycharm (free), and use Sublime text on occasion.

Just focus on learning and developing and you will find what features you're looking for.

12.1k views12.1k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

CodeMirror
CodeMirror
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code

CodeMirror is a JavaScript component that provides a code editor in the browser. When a mode is available for the language you are coding in, it will color your code, and optionally help with indentation.

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

Support for over 60 languages out of the box;A powerful, composable language mode system;Autocompletion (XML);Code folding;Configurable keybindings;Vim, Emacs, and Sublime Text bindings;Search and replace interface;Bracket and tag matching;Support for split views;Linter integration;Mixing font sizes and styles;Various themes;Able to resize to fit content;Inline and block widgets;Programmable gutters;Making ranges of text styled, read-only, or atomic;Bi-directional text support
Combines UI of a modern editor with code assistance and navigation; Integrated debugging experience
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
178.2K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
35.9K
Stacks
747
Stacks
186.5K
Followers
232
Followers
169.1K
Votes
15
Votes
2.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 6
    Integrable in your application
  • 4
    Better content manipulation methods
  • 3
    Easy Custom Mode
  • 1
    JavaScript based
  • 1
    Easy setup
Pros
  • 341
    Powerful multilanguage IDE
  • 310
    Fast
  • 194
    Front-end develop out of the box
  • 158
    Support TypeScript IntelliSense
  • 142
    Very basic but free
Cons
  • 46
    Slow startup
  • 29
    Resource hog at times
  • 20
    Poor refactoring
  • 14
    Poor UI Designer
  • 11
    Weak Ui design tools
Integrations
Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Sublime Text
Sublime Text
Opera Browser
Opera Browser
Safari
Safari
Vim
Vim
Emacs
Emacs
Firefox
Firefox
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to CodeMirror, Visual Studio Code?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Atom

Atom

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Vim

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Notepad++

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Emacs

Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.

Brackets

Brackets

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

Neovim

Neovim

Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.

VSCodium

VSCodium

It is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VSCode.

TextMate

TextMate

TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

gedit

gedit

gedit is the GNOME text editor. While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, gedit is a powerful general purpose text editor.

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