Expect the amount of f*ckery to increase as the AI realities set in but the number has to go up either way.
It reminds me of the good old days of Visual Studio + .NET + SQL Server where they played these games too.
Windows Recall.
VS Code forcing Copilot.
Windows forcing Copilot.
Office forcing Copilot.
Azure forcing Copilot.
GitHub forcing Copilot.
Outlook forcing Copilot.
Edge forcing Copilot.
You folks are insane.
The next major Windows 11 update coming in 2026 will have full agentic AI with full control over your (your?) PC. And it will hard require a pretty recent processor with Neural Processor Unit to make it work (so a lot more e-waste is coming).
I fear for the future.
Unfortunately both of them are back to their old selfs.
However lets not forget that those big corporations, are the same ones that keep the lights on across many FOSS projects that get talked daily on HN.
He touts AI, services, agentic copilot, and all the other stuff customers are railing against.
Some Windows manager got crucified on X recently for an enthusiastic tweet about turning Windows into an agentic OS. People called for this persons firing. But, this was straight out of Nadella’s playbook.
Even though I don't use it, and have disabled as much Copilot functionality as Microsoft will let me.
I can't wait for this AI bubble to burst.
Uhhh no? I’m good thanks
Than the .NET team acts surprised that despite going open source and cross platform, the non Microsoft shops still aren't rushing up to adopt it.
They have to thank upper management for shxxxx on their great accomplishments among the community.
This is an AI inline code suggestion tool using local LLMs.
Not great but may or may not impact your workflow. I love using agents, but Intellijs inline code suggestions (also based on a local LLMs) are usually useless to me.
This gets you a fully featured vscode-like baseline (navigation, language integration, integrated terminal, the whole thing).
I had tried many times to switch to vim/emacs and the initial barrier to get a workable system always kept me from pushing forward. With this I was able to make neovim my daily driver at work after just a couple weekends playing with it.
I just switched over to Omarchy for my personal OS and I know that it comes with a pre-configured neovim (using lazyvim) setup that looks like a fully-fledged IDE.
I personally have been using Helix as my editor at home and work. The fact that everything generally works on download is what got me using it.
How would vim compare?
Here's the chapter on debugging in the book I mentioned if you want to take a look: https://lazyvim-ambitious-devs.phillips.codes/course/chapter...
There might be awesome people and work behind it now, but I've already been burned enough times by rug pulls and shittyfication. I don't want to be planning another move 5 years from now.
The examples you mention already exist.
- navigation: plenty of native navigation in neovim, does lazy add anything specific?
- language integration: lsp, requires config sure but git clone isn't much work.
- integrated terminal: just run `:term`
Learning to think in vim means unlearning a lot of old habits. Today I only use fzf.vim, nvim-lspconfig and a theme, not even a plugin manager (I will migrate to the native one that's in nightly when it reaches stable though). Pretty much vanilla Neovim. I'm considering trying nvim-dap to get better debugger support but so far I'm fine with :termdebug for the languages it supports (c/go/rust just works).
When I find something I want vim to do I start with a keybinding, then a function, and maybe if it's complex add a plugin. Adding half of the available plugins just because creates an unnecessary attack vector you now have to keep an eye on.
For example, <leader> ft toggles a terminal in a bottom split. This is familiar enough that I knew I could rely on it whenever needed.
Could I have used :term and manually set splits each time? or learn tmux? or use ctrl+z and fg to move back and forth ? Sure, but that's extra cognitive load.
Maybe I want to focus first on becoming fluid with regex for search and replace, or improving the flow for running unit tests, or get used to using macros as a replacement for multicursor. There's a lot of gaps to cover, each small enough that it's "just do X" for a veteran, but enough when added up that I would much rather pay the cost gradually.
What’s that initial barrier? Both Vim and emacs has great documentation that includes a tutorial, a guide, and a reference.
What people often defines as workable system is replicating their old editors instead of learning the current one. Like adding a file tree on the side
Well, kinda. I define a workable system as a system I, personally, can work with straight away, with a minimum loss of productivity. It is not at all meant as a judgement on how good plain vim/emacs are.
This workability indeed might require temporally replicating old habits while I learn the new ones, which lazyvim does. Vscode-like file trees, global search, or integrated terminal, for example.
It's also about discoverability, like the helpers shown through which-key. And the guarantee that a set of default plugins play well with each other, so that I can leave toying with the config for whenever I have the time.
Some people might think this is a crutch for properly learning the tool, but this is not my experience. I'm much more likely to get comfortable with vim and learn further if I can be in it 8 hours a day from the start. At first I used the integrated terminal to run git commands, now I invoke lazygit, which I love. At first I used the file tree to navigate, now I have custom commands to bring a file and its test suite side to side on a keypress. This gradual curve is what I was missing earlier.
I get that using vim typically includes obsessive forms of efficiency, but some people just want to focus on coding in a way that's comfortable to them. Sometimes that means having a side panel.
I had tried many times to switch to vim/emacs and the initial barrier
to get a workable system always kept me from pushing forward.
They're replacing an EXTENSION, so it has basically nothing to do with VSCode itself. If they developed an "IntelliCode for Vim" plugin, they would also replace "IntelliCode for Vim" with Copilot.
In hindsight it's obvious why: it was the only free editor that has a product mindset and a product team behind. Microsoft put heavy hitters on it, some of their best engineers, treated it as some companies treat their core products.
Other IDEs/editors are mostly open source with no real direction and resources, or are proprietary expensive software.
It's unfortunate but to compete with VS Code you need a lot.
I finally got good RTL support with iTerm, language server stuff works great, and best of all, navigating and selecting things SYNTACTICALLY with nvim-treesitter-textobjects is life-changing.
They have not released 1.107 yet, doing a quick scan I am not seeing anything on the VSCodium github.
> The classic IntelliSense with language server for the used language is still free – but without AI support.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualSt...
I also noticed that copilot nowadays is forcing you to upgrade to their with following text:
"You've reached your monthly code completion limit. Upgrade your plan to Copilot Pro (30-day Free Trial) or wait until 2025-12-19 for your limit to reset to continue coding with GitHub Copilot"
Was using it actually like smarter auto-completion. But paying for that, hell no.
without going into the actual qualities of the editor, they simply lack extension support, for now.
In the embedded space, many manufacturers have switched - or are switching - to a suite of VSCode plugins and gradually discontinued the previous tools. Which is great on one hand: they don't have to keep supporting heavily modified IDEs from 10 or 20 years ago and they can better integrate with the rest of the ecosystem of plugins, scripts automation and such. LSP has been a good thing.
The problem is that you are now at the mercy of microsoft not fucking up with the environment at every other release. To put it simply, we are screwed. And i tried for so long not to use it because i knew this day would come, but it's just so much better.
And no, i will not just use a text editor and a makefile. I want an IDE. IDEs are good, when they seamlessly integrate with tools.
Did you try other IDEs? For example from Jetbrains? I'm not using IDEs but actually don't know others besides VSCode/Cursor and Jetbrains
I thought "what a perfect way for Microsoft to force copilot upon us". They can make it necessary by being the only "documentation" of their software.
I'm decades in at this point and still learning. Just keep in mind you don't need to know everything before getting a massive benefit out of it.
My top features:
- Fingers do not leave the home row (only good if you are a touch typer, but if you aren't, do it, it is worth it)
- Terminal based (so you can use it over ssh when needed, or pipe data into it during scripting sessions)
- Starts fast
- Navigating and editing with text objects (though this took me a while to work into my workflow)
- Regular expressions w/ ex commands
- Filtering text with cli commands via ex
- Editable macros
If you haven't gone through `vimtutor`, I recommend that as an early step.
(I'm not associated with Zed, just a happy user looking to share the goodness.)
I've been using Zed for about a month and I'm very happy with performance the features. It guides you to setup only what you need, that was a problem with VSCode that would collect random plugins through time. I work regularly with Go, React, TypeScript, and I don't miss VSCode.
For VSCode I can get the official extension by the actual company doing $thing. With Zed I need to trust Random Person's extension that it doesn't have spyware or keyloggers in it.
"but but the company could!" yes, but they have a reputation to protect, releasing an official extension that leaks data is Very Bad. Random Person (if that's their real name) doesn't care, or does. I have no way of telling.
> Don't miss anything from there either
Protect yourself by removing dependence on Big Tech ecosystems
They bait you with "free" tools to herd you into walled gardens where you are the product (and customer at the same time, LUL)
Ahh I was worried for a second.
If you want something powerful yet easy to pick up, you might want to look at e.g. Zed (GUI IDE), Sublime Text (GUI editor), or Micro (TUI editor). If you don’t mind a learning curve, Vim/Neovim and Emacs are excellent choices. But there’s a lot of other options out there, like Gedit, Kate, BBEdit, Notepad++, etc. depending on your platform of choice.
https://www.lazyvim.org/installation
Then run `LazyExtras` and you get a prompt that shows things like:
Recommended Languages: (2)
○ lang.docker mason.nvim nvim-lspconfig nvim-treesitter none-ls.nvim nvim-lint
○ lang.toml nvim-lspconfig
[lang.docker and lang.toml are examples of things you're selecting, the list after is what is being installed and configured for that thing]
For things like integrating a debugger, or to run your tests directly inline from the editor might require more customisation though.
For GUI, Zed is also really nice, has a great Vim mode, and auto-installs anything you might need. It loses a couple of points to VS Code on account of not being arbitrarily extensible, although that can also be seen as a plus, as it prevents extensions from randomly slowing everything down.
[1] https://zed.dev/
For the terminal, micro is nice if you're used to GUI editors.
A few niggles with the switch, like it seems to assume Git but I'm using Fossil. I also haven't found a decent cheat-sheet for keyboard controls. I got duplicate block and move block working, and really enjoy the column editing, but still using cut for line delete.
I think KWrite is the same engine underneath? at least it feels much akin to Kate. I use it mainly for assembly files, since I was able to hack in an armv8 syntax file and needed a different theme than Kate.
Anyway Zed is a good option.
In fact, the intent here is exactly the opposite of what you're hoping for (less AI badgering). They're trying to get people to actually use Copilot after recently missing internal adoption goals on all the AI products they're trying to shove down people's throats. The badgering is only going to get worse, and they're going to continue removing functioning, free features to do so. You should not be glad that Microsoft is killing a free lightweight product for a bloated, ecologically harmful and economically wasteful one.