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

Tower vs Visual Studio Code

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Tower
Tower
Stacks214
Followers360
Votes80
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code
Stacks186.6K
Followers169.1K
Votes2.3K
GitHub Stars178.2K
Forks35.9K

Tower vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Introduction

Tower and Visual Studio Code are both popular tools used in software development. While Tower is primarily a version control client, Visual Studio Code is a code editor with powerful features. Understanding the key differences between the two can help individuals decide which tool best suits their needs.

  1. Integration with VCS: Tower provides an extensive set of features specifically designed for version control systems (VCS), such as Git. It offers a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface for managing branches, resolving conflicts, and handling complex git workflows. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, has limited built-in support for VCS and relies on third-party extensions for most version control functionalities.

  2. Code Editing Capabilities: Visual Studio Code is primarily a code editor and offers a wide range of features to enhance the coding experience. It includes advanced code editing functionalities like code autocompletion, debugging, and integrated terminal, making it a powerful tool for developers. Although Tower provides some basic code editing capabilities, its main focus is on version control operations rather than code editing.

  3. Language Support: While both Tower and Visual Studio Code support various programming languages, Visual Studio Code has a broader range of language support. It offers an extensive collection of extensions and plugins that enable developers to work with a variety of languages and frameworks, making it a versatile choice for developers working in diverse environments.

  4. Customizability and Extensibility: Visual Studio Code is highly customizable and extensible, allowing users to personalize their development environments according to their preferences. It supports a wide range of themes, keyboard shortcuts, and allows users to install extensions to enhance the functionality further. In contrast, Tower has limited customization options and does not support extensive extensions or plugins.

  5. Multi-platform Support: Visual Studio Code is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, making it accessible to a wide range of users across different operating systems. Tower, on the other hand, is primarily designed for macOS users and has limited support for other operating systems, making it less accessible for developers using different platforms.

  6. Price and Licensing: Visual Studio Code is an open-source code editor and is available free of charge for personal and commercial use. It can be used by individuals or organizations without any license restrictions. Tower, however, is a commercial software with a licensing fee. While it offers a free trial, users need to purchase a license to continue using its full set of features.

In Summary, Tower is a dedicated version control client with a user-friendly interface and extensive VCS integration. On the other hand, Visual Studio Code is a versatile code editor with advanced code editing capabilities, broad language support, and high customizability, making it suitable for developers working in different environments.

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Advice on Tower, 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

Tower
Tower
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code

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

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

Clone & create repos with a click - Manage your GitHub, Bitbucket & Beanstalk accounts from within Tower;Open repos quickly - Tower's "Quick Open" dialog finds and opens repositories in no time;Automate the boring stuff - Fetching and stashing are automatically done for you, if you wish;Clone in the background- Downloading large projects happens in the background, while you work;Multiple windows - Have multiple projects open side-by-side
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
214
Stacks
186.6K
Followers
360
Followers
169.1K
Votes
80
Votes
2.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 19
    Git
  • 16
    Just works
  • 10
    Version control
  • 6
    Awesome
  • 6
    Simple layout
Cons
  • 5
    Expensive
  • 4
    Subscription based
  • 1
    No side by side diff
  • 0
    Merge conflict resolution impossible/unclear
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
Bitbucket
Bitbucket
TextMate
TextMate
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
GitHub
GitHub
GitLab
GitLab
Git
Git
Xcode
Xcode
Gerrit Code Review
Gerrit Code Review
Beanstalk
Beanstalk
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Tower, 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.

SourceTree

SourceTree

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.

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.

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