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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Version Control
  4. Source Code Management Desktop Apps
  5. SourceTree vs Visual Studio Code

SourceTree vs Visual Studio Code

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

SourceTree
SourceTree
Stacks10.6K
Followers8.1K
Votes727
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code
Stacks186.5K
Followers169.1K
Votes2.3K
GitHub Stars178.2K
Forks35.9K

SourceTree vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

SourceTree is a Git GUI client, providing a graphical interface for managing Git repositories, while Visual Studio Code is a versatile source code editor with built-in Git integration, offering a broader range of features for coding, debugging, and extensions support. Let's explore the key differences between them:

  1. User Interface: SourceTree provides a graphical user interface (GUI) that helps users visualize the Git workflows and operations. On the other hand, Visual Studio Code is primarily a code editor but does offer some Git integration features. However, it lacks the comprehensive GUI provided by SourceTree, making it a better choice for developers who prefer a more visual representation of their Git activities.

  2. Code Editing Features: Visual Studio Code is designed as a versatile code editor, providing a wide range of features such as syntax highlighting, code completion, and debugging capabilities. While SourceTree does provide some code editing features, its main focus is on Git functionality. Therefore, Visual Studio Code offers a more robust set of code editing features compared to SourceTree.

  3. Integration with Other Tools: Visual Studio Code has strong integration capabilities with various tools and services such as Azure, Docker, and extensions for different programming languages. This enables developers to have a seamless workflow by accessing these tools directly within the code editor. On the other hand, SourceTree primarily focuses on integrating with Git and may not offer the same level of integration with other tools and services.

  4. Collaboration and Teamwork: SourceTree offers features that facilitate collaboration and teamwork, such as the ability to view and manage branches, handle conflicts, and perform code reviews. While Visual Studio Code does have some collaboration features, such as live sharing and code review extensions, it doesn't provide the same level of team-oriented functionalities as SourceTree.

  5. Platform Compatibility: Visual Studio Code is a cross-platform code editor, available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. This makes it accessible for developers using different operating systems. On the other hand, SourceTree is primarily designed for Windows and macOS, limiting its availability for Linux users.

  6. Extensibility and Customization: Visual Studio Code has a rich ecosystem of extensions that allow users to customize and enhance their coding experience. These extensions offer additional functionality, language support or integrate with other tools. In contrast, while SourceTree does provide some level of customization, it may not have the same extensive library of extensions as Visual Studio Code.

In summary, SourceTree provides a comprehensive GUI for Git workflows and operations, while Visual Studio Code excels in code editing features, integration with other tools, and cross-platform compatibility.

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Advice on SourceTree, 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

SourceTree
SourceTree
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code

Use the full capability of Git and Mercurial in the SourceTree desktop app. Manage all your repositories, hosted or local, through SourceTree's simple interface.

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

Full-powered DVCS;Create, clone, commit, push, pull, merge, and more are all just a click away.;Review your outgoing and incoming changesets, cherry-pick between branches, patch handling, rebase, stash, shelve, and much more.;Use Git-flow and Hg-flow with ease. Keep your repositories cleaner and your development more efficient with SourceTree's intuitive interface to Git and Hg's 'branchy' development model.
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
10.6K
Stacks
186.5K
Followers
8.1K
Followers
169.1K
Votes
727
Votes
2.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 205
    Visual history and branch view
  • 164
    Beautiful UI
  • 134
    Easy repository browsing
  • 87
    Gitflow support
  • 75
    Interactive stage or discard by hunks or lines
Cons
  • 12
    Crashes often
  • 8
    So many bugs
  • 7
    Fetching is slow sometimes
  • 5
    No dark theme (Windows)
  • 5
    Extremely slow
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
GitHub
GitHub
Git
Git
Bitbucket
Bitbucket
Windows
Windows
macOS
macOS
Mercurial
Mercurial
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to SourceTree, 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.

GitKraken

GitKraken

The downright luxurious Git client for Windows, Mac and Linux. Cross-platform, 100% standalone, and free.

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.

Fork

Fork

Manage your repositories without leaving the application. Organize the repositores into categories. Fork's Diff Viewer provides a clear view to spot the changes in your source code quickly.

Tower

Tower

Use all of Git's powerful feature set - in a GUI that makes you more productive.

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