• 9point6@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Genuinely curious—why would someone choose to use notepad++ over something like VSCode in 2023?

    I can’t say I’ve used n++ in over a decade when I switched to sublime around 2010, moved again to VSCode about 5 years ago

    • UlrikHD@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      VSCode uses electron so it’s not exactly a lightweight text editor, way overkill if you just want to read a simple .txt. Add on the fact if you got way too many extension, it will be even heavier.

      • NekuSoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de
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        1 year ago

        That’s true, although from my experience is VSCode one of the very few electron apps that still start within fractions of a second, even with a handful of extensions. On my machine VSCode (with 38 extensions) is ready to use before the GNOME launch animation has finished.

        That said, things are probably a bit different on machines with limited RAM.

    • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      NP++ is more lightweight and has some useful stuff builtin and easier to justify to IT dept to than a full IDE 🤷

      Personally I prefer pycharm and Atom for my home needs.

      • 9point6@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Justifying it to IT makes a lot of sense actually. Particularly if you need extensions. I’m lucky I get admin on my laptop where I work

        Interesting you’re using atom, actually! Is it still getting much love? I assumed development would go by the wayside once Microsoft bought GitHub a few years ago (as VSCode is almost an identical product)

        • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah it’s on my personal machine, I use it alongside pycharm but it’s (atom) not my main IDE, I keep it because of a few things it does. I disagree vscode is the same, it’s a poorer implementation of pycharm IMHO. Just my opinion though everyone is different in workspace.

          • 9point6@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m interested in what differs from atom about VSCode in your opinion. Wasn’t VSCode a fork of atom originally? edit: apparently not! When I was picking between the two about 5 years ago, they seemed almost identical to me

            I’m personally not a big fan of heavy IDEs like the jetbrains products, so VSCode being lighter than pycharm (or any of the IDEA products) is a bonus to me.

    • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      N++ can search for a string in a directory full of files, that’s what I use it for. Also helpful for showing unprintable characters like linefeeds or changing bit order mode, I’m not sure vs code can do any of that.

      For writing code, though, I do use vs code

      • 9point6@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        IIRC you can do both of those with VSCode, I think even without any extensions too!

        The search sidebar has include and exclude fields for directories to search in.

        For showing unprintable characters, I think it’s split into two settings: one for whitespace one for control characters like null and bell