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Comment by nielsbot

8 years ago

I thought VS Code was Atom? (well, a fork of)

15 comments

nielsbot

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rhencke  8 years ago

No, it's not a fork. They both run on Electron, so they share a common runtime environment, but they share no editor code.

  • jonny_eh  8 years ago

    Wasn't Electron created for Atom? If so, VSCode is at least using a part of Atom.

    • rhencke  8 years ago

      That doesn't make Electron _a part_ of Atom. If I build my application on top of Linux, my application is not _a part_ of Linux.

      Electron is its own application framework, that Atom builds itself on top of. Electron is not a text editor framework, no more than QT or Cocoa is.

      It is _very_ fair to say VSCode is using Electron - heavily, in fact! But saying VSCode is using part of Atom is just not true, and implies VSCode is building atop the Atom editor, which it does not.

ezekg  8 years ago

VSCode is built on top of the same framework as Atom, Electron, which was previously called Atom-shell.

  • frutiger  8 years ago

    It's worth noting that the core contributors to Electron are Github employees.

    • toyg  8 years ago

      That gives the acquisition a very different perspective.

      What if MS is really buying Electron? It’s something they’ve been using a lot in all their recent products, and it’s a key technology in the contemporary development landscape. Making it more Windows-friendly would definitely help them.

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