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

VSCodium vs Visual Studio Code

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code
Stacks186.5K
Followers169.1K
Votes2.3K
GitHub Stars178.2K
Forks35.9K
VSCodium
VSCodium
Stacks103
Followers93
Votes57
GitHub Stars29.0K
Forks1.5K

VSCodium vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

VSCodium and Visual Studio Code are both popular code editors used by developers. Let's explore the key differences between them.

  1. Licensing: VSCodium is released under the MIT license, which allows users to freely use, modify, and distribute the software without any restrictions. On the other hand, Visual Studio Code is released under a proprietary license by Microsoft, which means there are some usage restrictions and limitations.

  2. Branding and Telemetry: VSCodium differs from Visual Studio Code in terms of branding and telemetry. VSCodium is stripped of Microsoft branding and any telemetry or tracking features that may be present in Visual Studio Code. This makes VSCodium more privacy-focused, appealing to users who value privacy and open-source software without any tracking.

  3. Extensions: Another difference is in the extensions available. While Visual Studio Code has a wide range of official and third-party extensions available through the Visual Studio Code Marketplace, VSCodium does not have direct access to the marketplace. However, VSCodium can still use extensions by manually installing them or through alternative extension repositories.

  4. Update Frequency: VSCodium and Visual Studio Code also differ in terms of update frequency. Visual Studio Code is updated more frequently, often with new features and improvements, while VSCodium may not receive updates as frequently. This can be an important consideration for users who want access to the latest features and bug fixes.

  5. Integrated Services and Features: Visual Studio Code offers integrated services and features that are not available in VSCodium. This includes Visual Studio LiveShare, which allows for collaborative editing and debugging, as well as the ability to easily connect to Azure services. These integrated features can be a significant advantage depending on the specific needs of the developer.

  6. Support and Documentation: As an officially supported Microsoft product, Visual Studio Code has extensive support and documentation available. Users can access official Microsoft documentation, support forums, and other resources for assistance. While VSCodium also has community support, it may not have the same level of official support and documentation as Visual Studio Code.

In summary, VSCodium and Visual Studio Code are both popular code editors based on the same underlying source code, but they differ in their licensing and branding. VSCodium is essentially Visual Studio Code without Microsoft branding and telemetry, providing a fully open-source alternative for users who prioritize privacy and freedom.

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Advice on Visual Studio Code, VSCodium

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
Simon
Simon

Student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Jan 9, 2020

Decided

I decided to choose VSCode over Sublime text for my Systems Programming class in C. What I love about VSCode is its awesome ability to add extensions. Intellisense is a beautiful debugger, and Remote SSH allows me to login and make real-time changes in VSCode to files on my university server. This is an awesome alternative to going back and forth on pushing/pulling code and logging into servers in the terminal. Great choice for anyone interested in C programming!

1.29M views1.29M
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code
VSCodium
VSCodium

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

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

Combines UI of a modern editor with code assistance and navigation; Integrated debugging experience
Open Source; No Microsoft tracking; VSCode extensions compatible;
Statistics
GitHub Stars
178.2K
GitHub Stars
29.0K
GitHub Forks
35.9K
GitHub Forks
1.5K
Stacks
186.5K
Stacks
103
Followers
169.1K
Followers
93
Votes
2.3K
Votes
57
Pros & Cons
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
Pros
  • 6
    Simple and intuitive UI
  • 6
    Community-driven
  • 6
    Open source
  • 5
    Intellisense
  • 4
    Terminal
Cons
  • 2
    Some extentions can't be isntalled direclty from IDE

What are some alternatives to Visual Studio Code, VSCodium?

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.

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.

Kakoune

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.

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