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Community Ports 'Visual Studio Code' To Chromebooks, Raspberry Pi (infoworld.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the IDE-ideas dept.

An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld: A community build project led by developer Jay Rodgers is making Visual Studio Code, Microsoft's lightweight source code editor, available for Chromebooks, Raspberry Pi boards, and other devices based on 32-bit or 64-bit ARM processors. Supporting Linux and Chrome OS as well as the DEB (Debian) and RPM package formats, the automated builds of Visual Studio Code are intended for less-common platforms that might not otherwise receive them. Obvious beneficiaries will be IoT developers focused on ARM devices -- and the Raspberry Pi in particular -- who will find it helpful to have the editor directly on the device they're programming against... Rodgers said the lure of Visual Studio Code for him was its user-friendly interface, making it approachable for new users.

79 comments

  1. What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    This is a waste of time. Surely everyone has something better to do than wasting their time on useless projects like this. We have all these nasty vulnerabilities because people are pissing away their time on nonsense like this rather than doing things that are actually worthwhile. This is why tech is a disaster and why there are so many worms and viruses.

    1. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Complaining on Slashdot is certainly much more productive. Carry on stalwart soldier!

    2. Re: What a fucking waste of time! by spongman · · Score: 2

      Lame AC has never fixed a single bug in anything.

    3. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by ed.mps · · Score: 1

      yeah, sure, people porting projects to other architectures is a newfangled trend and must die. except it isn't, but you don't care, right?

      --
      !sig
    4. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      In this case I can't see a good reason to do this, although I can't see the reason for Visual Studio Code in the first place.

      It has very little to do with Visual Studio. It's just borrowing the branding for some reason to draw attention.

    5. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      The actual merit doesn't depend on the general idea, it depends on the specific project.

    6. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by JustNiz · · Score: 1, Troll

      Its because Microsoft's entire playbook still only contains multiple variations of embrace/extend/extinguish.

      People that are still being fooled by Microsoft (i.e. most purchasing managers) won't understand this so won't actually know that it isn't what it pretends to be, but will think this must be a good thing in some general way.

    7. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      because people are pissing away their time on nonsense like this rather than doing things that are actually worthwhile.

      like writing a ransomware you say?

    8. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by geoskd · · Score: 1

      This is a waste of time. Surely everyone has something better to do than wasting their time on useless projects like this.

      While I would agree that this is a waste of time, I would still encourage it, as well as encouraging others to use visual studio for their IOT development. I don't like competition, and this should ensure that I have less of it.

      --
      I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
    9. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      It has very little to do with Visual Studio

      Which is a very good thing, because otherwise you'd have to port an MFC application to Chrome OS. Good luck with that.

      On the other hand, the value proposition of VS Code on Raspberry Pi seems much lower due to both a more stringent memory limitation and less stringent language and runtime limitation.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    10. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow.

      If you still believe Visual Studio is all about MFC, you haven't looked at it in what, a decade and a half?

    11. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 1

      We're discussing VSCode. It's one of those new fancy Sublime/Atom style editors.

    12. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      announcement: microsoft releases an open source project.

      idiots of slashdot: OMG! Embrace Extend Extinguish!

      You people are just fucking retarded.

    13. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In fact, this is why we still have cancer and AIDS. If all these amateur computer programmers would just stop wasting their time on software projects, they could cure diseases much more quickly.

    14. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by bug_hunter · · Score: 1

      Look, I'm a big MS Hater from way back, BUT
      Visual Studio Code is an open source editor with plugins that make it work with a variety of languages.

      There's not even a paid version of it for purchasing managers to be fooled by.

      --
      It's turtles all the way down.
    15. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Get with the times! Visual Studio has been through at least a half dozen other failed, weak, and insecure technologies in the last decade. Still a horrible mess the last time I looked.

    16. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just out of interest, which particular "Project Like This" are you talking about?

      This has the feel of a copy-paste response to me.

    17. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Visual Studio Code is pretty damned good. It's also driving the adoption of IDEs as a box of pieces, VSC is transforming the IDE from a behemoth that can only be created by a large group of paid employeers, into a shell over open source pieces. See stuff like Ensime (not an MS product) - which can be used by any editor to add code colouring, completion etc easily. This is VSC's approach and MS should be congratulated for it.

    18. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      idiots of slashdot: OMG! Embrace Extend Extinguish!

      Those 'idiots' are exhibiting pattern recognition against a 35+ year corporate history. That might be a bit beyond you, though.

    19. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

      New editors are announced pretty much daily from all sorts of sources - but Microsoft release one and Slashdotters fall over themselves to deride MS for it.

      In my time as a dev, I have used:

      - EditPlus
      - Notepad++
      - Atom
      - Brackets
      - Scrawl
      - Textmate
      - Sublime
      - BBEdit
      - TextWrangler
      - UltraEdit

      and probably a bunch more ... but, ya know, MS releases one so fuck MS...

      If this is Embrace Extend and Extinguish, then I'm all for it because VSCode is a fucking good editor.

    20. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean like Emacs?

    21. Re: What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, except for the sucky parts.

    22. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by oobayly · · Score: 1

      I think the poster basically lives around the concept of Down with this sort of thing...

    23. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes a phrase that was used about 35 years ago. But please, tell me how EEE would work when it's open source.

    24. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Yes a phrase that was used about 35 years ago. But please, tell me how EEE would work when it's open source.

      Check IE. As soon as you extend via a proprietary component, open source be damned. Owning the entire delivery chain allows you to do these things, and DoJ be damned. Not much good to be fined your profits to date after your competition has been wiped off the map, leaving you with nothing but profit afterwards.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    25. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      IOW, MS is copying a specific open source project, otherwise known as Eclipse? Except Eclipse actually works, while VS.... Well, let's say there's a special cubicle in hell for those working on VS, where they will continually have to swap machines in various configurations of MS OSes and Visual Studio versions which don't match the required codebase and do nothing else but try to get a build to work. Completion means a new machine, or a project update driven by the BOFH.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    26. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      Visual Studio Code is pretty damned good.

      No it fucking isn't.

      --
      No sig today...
    27. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by MountainLogic · · Score: 1

      Like VS, hate VS; be a MS fan boy or a MS hatter, but please VS is not a lightweight editor as the blurb says. VS has many nice features, VS has some dumb features. but those feature do not make it light weight editor. Please someone rewrite the blurb to bring some sanity to the term lightweight.

    28. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Jadecristal · · Score: 1

      Sublime is at least not Electron-driven. Electron is bloated cancer, even if modern computers "can" run it.

    29. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Oh look, an idiot who decides to comment about something they obviously have no actual knowledge of...

      Visual Studio Code is an entirely separate product to Visual Studio. The two are only related by name.

      VS Code is a fantastic, extensible, cross platform text editor with support for many many languages, plugins and code hinters.

      Its also just a 37MB download for Windows, 68MB download for OSX and a 41MB download for Linux.

      Visual Studio is a behemoth of an IDE, running into gigabytes of space used and is only available for Windows (and OSX if you count the VS For Mac project, which really is a continuation of Xamarin Studio after the acquisition).

      For someone with a five digit ID, you really fucked up on this one...

    30. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those 'idiots' are exhibiting pattern recognition against a 35+ year corporate history. That might be a bit beyond you, though.

      The only things this has been attributed to were Java and HTML standards and unless you have had your head firmly planted in the sand you will see that neither things was "extinguished", quite the opposite in fact.

    31. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Check IE. As soon as you extend via a proprietary component, open source be damned.

      Developers have to actually choose to use that proprietary component, that is the component provides them something of significant value that they couldn't get before. The same thing happened with ActiveX and Flash, web standards lagged so far behind technology that companies like Microsoft and Adobe created these technologies to enable developers to have these new features because they werent available anywhere else.

      If FOSS (or even standards bodies) was on the cutting edge of creating innovative new features for developers and end users then this wouldn't happen. But instead they are focussed on mimicking the features of MS Office, Google Docs, Pages, etc or creating yet-another-linux distribution, yet-another-android-based operating system or another init system or another windowing system or another shell, the NIH syndrome is running rampant reinventing the wheel in the open source community and then those same people bitch and whine when Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. produce things that people actually want.

      This isn't an indictment of one ideology or methodology or the other but there really needs to be a wakeup call to start getting on with innovation or if not then at least stop whining about proprietary innovation.

    32. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Standards bodies, AFAIK, have never been ahead of the curve. The problem is when innovation is carried out by a monopoly that can leverage the existing monopoly to enforce its "innovations" (ActiveX is a big one there, although businesses were pretty dumb to lock in and attempt to grab the falling knife) Flash was interesting in its first few incarnations, but its shortcomings were too great to overcome.)

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    33. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Like VS, hate VS; be a MS fan boy or a MS hatter, but please VS is not a lightweight editor as the blurb says.

      Are you talking about Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code? They are two different things and this article is about the latter.

    34. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Bozzio · · Score: 1

      Look again?

      VS has gone from painful to wonderful in the last 12 years. It's gotten so good that you can even get by without 3rd party productivity add-ons like Resharper.

      I understand you might prefer an other IDE, but saying VS is a "horrible mess" is just false.

      --
      I just pooped your party.
    35. Re:What a fucking waste of time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We aren't talking about Visual Studio.

      This is about "Visual Studio Code" - which is an open source/free software product of Microsoft Research and has nothing to with Visual Studio.

      As for the rest - this isn't like Eclipse. The parts of Eclipse make Eclipse. The parts VSC is using, like Ensime, can be used ANYWHERE by any editor. Ensime is a daemon that the editor asks question of (complete this, what colour should this be). Even its tasks etc are delegated to Grunt etc. More of this is good. It's aim is to be as light clean and small as possible abstracting the technical details into a high level workflow and letting you use whatever you want to implement them.

      VSC isn't perfect but at the moment it's going in the right direction.

    36. Re: What a fucking waste of time! by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Half of this conversation would go away if MS had the common sense NOT to call ther separate product by the similar and confusing name VIsualStudio xxx. The should call it something else.

      Reminds me of the days when my boss confused Java and JavaScript, another marketing-driven name cockup.

      And I agree with you, VScode is not bad.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    37. Re: What a fucking waste of time! by tigersha · · Score: 1

      No. If amateur hackers did bioengineering dev they would create Ebola++, brag about their l33t g3n3 sk1llzz, go and open source it and watch how the bad guys make Ebola+++ and exterminate the unbelieving part of humanity like rats.

      And then still insist to n their cyberlibertarian principles to high heaven that information needs to be free, the bad guys can use the genes for heir own purpose and bitch that that someone violated some obscure clause in the GPL for genes.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  2. In other news... by GerbilSoft · · Score: 1, Informative

    Community "ports" slashdot.org to Chromebooks, Raspberry Pi.
    Community "ports" microsoft.com to Chromebooks, Raspberry Pi.
    etc... You get the idea.

    Visual Studio "Code" isn't Visual Studio. It's also not a real program. It's merely a JavaScript "app" website wrapped in a copy of Chromium.

    1. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      This. It doesn't even include a compiler. Microsoft thirty years ago did better than this when they included Basic with DOS.

    2. Re: In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      30 years ago they were a tech company. Now they're a legal company run by a lawyer.

    3. Re: In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > run by a lawyer

      They do say that companies eventually go through 4 stages:
      1. run by the owner(s)
      2. run by managers
      3. run by accountants
      4. run by lawyers (receivers)

    4. Re:In other news... by hackel · · Score: 1

      TIL I learned apps written in Javascript are not "real" programs. You are ridiculously behind the times. No one would want their *editor* to come with a *compiler*. They are completely different things. Your editor should adapt to use whichever compilers you wish, be they javascript, C++, or Rust. Keep on spreading your ignorant FUD, though, by all means.

      (PS I actually hate VS Code, I just hate idiots much more.)

    5. Re:In other news... by Bozzio · · Score: 1

      You have the charm and tact of a slashdot reader.

      --
      I just pooped your party.
  3. Android by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Could this also be ported to Android? It doesn't sound like it's that far away from running on Android right now.

    1. Re:Android by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nope. VS Code runs on Electron, which runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. No Android. Since Electron is essentially the Chrome web browser stripped down you could, in theory, have a cloud version that Android could load up in Chrome, but you'd have to rewrite anything relating to file handling and keyboard handling (as most Android devices don't have a hardware keyboard). It would take a lot more work to port it. I would imagine in this project's case they just had to port any native code modules to Linux and change any external process usage to work with Linux tools.

    2. Re:Android by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If you want to develop Android apps on Android download AIDE.

    3. Re:Android by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why would you want to? It's not Visual Studio itself, it's just a code editor. There are a bazillion code editors out there, and the VS one isn't really that spectacular, it's just the editor you use when you use VS.

    4. Re: Android by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tried it, but it has way too many annoying 'features', and the interface needs serious work.

    5. Re:Android by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 1

      Actually if this thing ran on Android (along with some compilers and interpreters) - that would be pretty interesting. Right now there's not really anybody developing *on* Android, just *for* Android.

    6. Re:Android by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure I'd want to develop *on* Android. 20 minute builds? No thanks.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  4. Completely useless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Visual Studio is garbage compare to Eclipse, Slime or literally anything else that is free and open source on Linux. If they have so much time to waste, why not port notepad++ instead?

  5. Found the LUDDITE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    ONLY apps can app apps, which is why Appy Studio for Apps lets you app apps on Appberry Pi and Appbooks while apping other apps! LUDDITE software can't do that!

    Apps!

    1. Re:Found the LUDDITE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Will you stApp it already with all this crApp? You're making me very un'Appy!

  6. Just Linux by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 1

    Actually it sounds like they just ported it to Linux. Running it on a Chromebook requires you to be running Linux in some form or another on your Chromebook first, so there's no Chrome app like I thought they meant.

    1. Re:Just Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Um, what? There's *already* a version of VS Code for Linux.

      https://code.visualstudio.com/download lets you download the version of Windows, Mac, or .deb/.rpm packages.

    2. Re:Just Linux by SpeZek · · Score: 1

      It's already available for Linux. .deb, .rpm and tarballs.

    3. Re: Just Linux by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      Reminds me of "Knocked Up" when they find out about mrskin.

  7. Embedded: You're doing it wrong. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    While I'm not an IDE person I can say that the Microsoft IDEs are amongst the best. But if you're editing your code on your target platform you're just doing embedded wrong. It's not all that hard to get a cross compiler going for something like a Raspberry Pi going.

    And if you compile anything complicated you'll save yourself time in the long run. The RPi and other embedded targets are not the spiffiest when it comes to CPU bound gcc.

    Oh, and if you're using a scripting language to write your embedded code then you're really doing it wrong!

  8. Emacs was too bloated by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1, Funny

    Eighty Meg's And Constantly Swapping ... Ducks

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:Emacs was too bloated by jma05 · · Score: 2

      Emacs wasn't bloated enough.
      So we had to make VS Code that takes 500 MB on starting with a few files.

    2. Re:Emacs was too bloated by locofungus · · Score: 2

      Eighty? Eight!

      --
      God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
    3. Re:Emacs was too bloated by eWarz · · Score: 1

      VS code is not a bad editor. I don't count in megs these days since I have a few dozen gigs of RAM and more than a TB of storage. I guess some people are still on 386 chips... Oh and *VIM* is far better than Emacs...

  9. Um... Eclipse? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So this is like Eclipse, but made by Microsoft, and all that that entails.

    Read the license agreement for Visual Studio Code.

    1. Re:Um... Eclipse? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which is what exactly? What is in the license that is "...all that that entails"?

    2. Re:Um... Eclipse? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It looks MIT licensed. It also has basically nothing in common with Eclipse... it's a relatively lightweight text editor with strong support for tool integrations, not a full IDE.

  10. But VSC == Atom? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Isn't it?

  11. Microsoft made a bad naming decision by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

    After reading some of the comments here (and in other articles before), it seems clear that there are many people with a wrong perception regarding the Visual Studio Code/Visual Studio differences. And they aren't even close to be something similar: (new) enhanced editor vs. (well-established) over-featured IDE.

    Why did Microsoft somehow provoke that misunderstanding by using a so similar name (whose intuitive short-form is precisely Visual Studio)? To help Visual Studio Code grow? And what about the Visual Studio image? And what about selling the idea of being misinterpretation-prone? A new twist is the fact that, unlikely Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code doesn't seem to be precisely a top-quality product (perhaps just because of being a newcomer to a market with lots of alternatives).

    I think that Microsoft made a bad decision on this front and that, unless they are planning to convert it into some kind of outside-Windows Visual Studio, they should change the VSC name.

    --
    Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    1. Re: Microsoft made a bad naming decision by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Fully agree. Like the whole Java va JavaScript thing, another marketing-driven aming cockup

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    2. Re: Microsoft made a bad naming decision by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Both scenarios are similar on the sense of naming conventions not motivated by technical aspects, other than they seem quite different.

      On one hand, this kind of programming-name+Script approach was a somehow common proceeding some years ago (e.g., VB vs. VBScript) and the syntaxes of Java and JavaScript, like the ones of other cases like VB-VBScript, are also quite similar. On the other hand, both VS and VSC are sold by the same company and the "Code" addition isn't too common (and seems even easily misinterpretable); also they are completely different products as far as one is an IDE including the compilers of certain set of languages (the .NET ones + further additions in the last versions) and the other one is a programming-enhanced text editor.

      A closer example would be the NetBeans/Eclipse companies selling a text editor with a name like NetBeansLight or EclipsePad .

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
  12. Typical Linux Mentality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How do you run this? How do you uninstall this? Because there is nothing on the page that explains that.

    1. Re:Typical Linux Mentality by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Through the package manager, like every other application on Linux.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    2. Re:Typical Linux Mentality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where is the package manager on crouton?

    3. Re:Typical Linux Mentality by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      No idea, I don't use Crouton. I'm more familiar with major Linux distributions that are used by both enterprise and users alike, like Redhat, CentOS, Fedora, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo etc.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  13. Huh? by gweihir · · Score: 1

    There is VI and Emacs and Joe (for the WordStar shortcut users like me), and a ton of others. What else is needed? This seems like complete nonsense to me.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re: Huh? by tigersha · · Score: 1

      Look, I love joe, I used it this morning, after 30 years the WordPerfect keybndings are wired into my neurons.

      Back in 1988 I even wrote a small spreadsheet for DOS with WP keybindings.

      But it is not an IDE and if you use it as one you are doing something wrong.

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  14. This is not a 'port' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This isn't a port. A port invokes taking a code base written for one system and modifying (or rewriting) it to work on another.

    What is happening here is someone has created build scripts to 'compile' and 'package' for different platforms.

    Please correct this, it's embarrassing

  15. lightweight source code by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Microsoft's lightweight source code editor

    Compared to what? Electron apps like Slack and VSCode easily eat 1-3 GB RAM and 100% CPU on one core if Saturn is in zenith while a leaf is falling near you, or some other more or less arbitrary requirement. When they behave, expect 500-800 MB RAM usage per instance.

  16. "User-friendly interface" by hackel · · Score: 1

    If you're doing *embedded development* and can't even figure out how to use vim, an arguably *much more powerful* editor that runs on every platform imaginable, you're in for a very hard time.