Re:Microsoft is retiring Visual Studio for Mac in 2024
by TheCleric on Saturday November 04, 2023 @11:12AM
(#38141773)
To me the line between editor and IDE is you don't have to leave the IDE to do anything if you don't want to. Including the thing that VS Code lacks in most cases: projects and compilation. For example, in Visual Studio you can go from "New Executable" to an actual compiled executable without leaving Visual Studio or using a terminal.
Not that I want those things in VSCode, and if I did there's likely a plugin for that. This is just where I happen to dilineate the two.
VSCode feels pretty bog standard in the pantheon of IDEs that I've (ab)used over the decades. By default VSCode searches symbols/references, formats code, debugs, has an integrated terminal, handles source control, has smart autocomplete and snippets, etc. I've never harkened back to my days with PhpStorm/PyCharm/VS/Eclipse/CLion/etc and thought "gosh, I wish VSCode did <this-feature>".
To me, if VSCode is closer to Notepad than to NetBeans, then the "text editor" vs "IDE" distinction is virtually meaningless. Ditto for the term "source code editor." I guess it's just personal preference though.