Comment by SuperNinKenDo
15 hours ago
Oof. That's a damn shame. I think languages and use-cases like this are the perfect place for purpose built IDE development. If even these guys are turning into a VS Code downstream that's just sad.
Coincidentally I was thinking of giving R another go, but honestly now... I'm good...
If (That's a big if) they can give RStudio experience in VSCode environment, benefiting from the plugin ecosystem etc. why not?
RStudio is great when you are doing your own thing, but when it comes to more generic tools like Git, LLM, Autoformatting etc. it's a hard pass.
The why not is that they'll constantly be wrestling with, and limited by the generalist nature of a tool like VS Code. While generalism has its benefits and its drawbacks, what it most definitely does not give you is a fully bespoke experience, by its very definition, and I'm simply bemoaning that specific loss, because I like to see specialised tools sometimes.
Who cares if it's VSCodium-based?
I feel like a lot of these can be packaged as an extension for vscode. I'd rather not have multiple different variations of the same ide, too much duplication.
Because generally they don't add anything that couldn't have just been a VSCode extension... in which case it would really be better for users if it was a VSCode extension. The only reason they don't do that is for branding & control purposes.
There are exceptions. E.g. Theia actually does enough stuff differently that I think it warrants being its own thing. At least it did. Looks like they have jumped on the AI bandwagon too.
Maybe this is the same; I haven't looked at it in detail. But "we have an IDE! (don't tell them it's vscode)" feels a lot like "we have an app! (don't tell them its a webview)".
I like seeing specialised, bespoke tools existing, that's all.