Overview

Emacs

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.2K

Votes322

Visual Studio Code

Stacks185.7K

Followers169.1K

Votes2.3K

GitHub Stars178.2K

Forks35.9K

Emacs vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Emacs and Visual Studio Code

Platform Compatibility: Emacs is primarily designed for Unix-like systems, including Linux and Mac OS, although there are versions available for Windows as well. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, is built to work on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. This difference in platform compatibility allows Visual Studio Code to be used on a wider range of operating systems.
User Interface: Emacs has a command-line interface with a text-based user interface, allowing users to interact with the software through text commands. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, provides a modern and visually appealing user interface with a graphical user interface. This graphical interface makes it easier to navigate and use the various features and functionalities of the editor.
Extensions and Plugins: Visual Studio Code has a vast and active ecosystem of extensions and plugins developed by the community, which can enhance its functionality and provide additional features. These extensions can be easily installed and managed through the Visual Studio Code marketplace. Emacs, on the other hand, has its own package manager called "ELPA" (Emacs Lisp Package Archive) that allows users to install and manage packages, but its ecosystem of extensions might not be as extensive as Visual Studio Code.
Default Features and Built-in Tools: Emacs comes with a wide range of pre-installed features and built-in tools, including a powerful text editor, a file manager, a version control system, and a debugger. These default features make Emacs a versatile and comprehensive development environment. While Visual Studio Code also provides a set of built-in tools and features, it offers a more modular approach where users can install specific extensions or plugins to tailor the editor according to their needs.
Customization Options: Emacs is renowned for its flexibility and extensibility. Users can easily customize almost every aspect of the editor's behavior, from keybindings to the appearance and functionality of various modes. Visual Studio Code also allows customization through user settings and extension configurations, but its level of customization might not be as deep and comprehensive as Emacs.
Integration with Other Tools and Services: Visual Studio Code has excellent integration with various tools and services commonly used in the modern software development workflow. It allows seamless integration with version control systems like Git, build tools like npm and Maven, and cloud platforms like Azure and AWS. While Emacs also supports integration with third-party tools and services, the level of integration and ease of use might vary compared to Visual Studio Code.

In summary, Emacs is a powerful and highly customizable editor primarily designed for Unix-like systems, with a command-line interface and extensive default features. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, is a cross-platform editor with a graphical interface, a rich ecosystem of extensions and plugins, and strong integration with modern development tools and services.

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Advice on Emacs, Visual Studio Code

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

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

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

Emacs	Visual Studio Code
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.	Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
Content-sensitive editing modes, including syntax coloring, for a variety of file types including plain text, source code, and HTML.;Complete built-in documentation, including a tutorial for new users.;Full Unicode support for nearly all human languages and their scripts.;Highly customizable, using Emacs Lisp code or a graphical interface.;A large number of extensions that add other functionality, including a project planner, mail and news reader, debugger interface, calendar, and more. Many of these extensions are distributed with GNU Emacs others are available separately.	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 1.3K	Stacks 185.7K
Followers 1.2K	Followers 169.1K
Votes 322	Votes 2.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros 65 Vast array of extensions 44 Have all you can imagine 40 Everything i need in one place 39 Portability 32 Customer config Cons 4 Hard to learn for beginners 4 So good and extensible, that one can get sidetracked 1 Not default preinstalled in GNU/linux	Pros 340 Powerful multilanguage IDE 309 Fast 193 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 13 Poor UI Designer 11 Weak Ui design tools

What are some alternatives to Emacs, Visual Studio Code?

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

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 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++ 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.

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 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

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

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

Kakoune

Kakoune is a code editor heavily inspired by Vim, as such most of its commands are similar to vi’s ones. Kakoune can operate in two modes, normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode.