3.4. Erich Gamma#

gamma

3.5. Monaco Editor#

Monaco editor

  • Lightweight code editor that runs in the browser

  • Used by OneDrive, Internet Explorer F12 tools

  • Early version with some thousands of users, but developers & platform not ready yet

  • 2014: Pivot to desktop via node webkit => VS Code

3.6. VS Code Desktop app#

  • First released in 04/2015

  • Ships to Windows, Linux, macOS as Electron app (built on top of Chromium and Node.js)

    • First Microsoft tool to run on Linux

  • Written in TypeScript (started around the same time)

  • Only uses standard web APIs, no web frameworks

  • Extensions run in separate processes, talk to the main process via remote procedure calls

  • Novelty: Language server protocol (LSP) for language support

3.7. VS Code - license#

  • Source code is MIT licensed (released 11/2015)

  • Microsoft’s VS Code distribution

    • adds Microsoft branding

    • turns on telemetry by default

    • provides access to extensions marketplace hosted by Microsoft (some extensions are closed source)

  • Alternative distributions:

3.8. VS Code - the open source project#

  • >10 years of development, >1M lines of code

  • Thousands of issues opened every month

    • Team goal: reply within 24 hours

  • Monthly release cycle release cycle

  • Team (2020): 36 = 25 engineers, 6 program managers, 2 doc writers, 1 designer, 1 marketing, 1 UX researcher

  • Watch later: How we make VS Code in the open