Visual Studio Code vs Tower

Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plug-ins available to extend its functionality.

There is very solid TypeScript integration in Visual Studio Code. Both are developed by Microsoft and VSC itself is written in TypeScript.

VSC includes debugging tools for Node.js, TypeScript, and JavaScript.

You don't need to configure and add plugins before being productive. However, you can add plugins if needed but for the basics you're well covered.

There's no need to press alt+tab to go to a terminal: it is directly integrated into the editor. Shift+~ is a handy hotkey to toggle the integrated terminal.

For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well.

Released under the MIT License.

VS-Code has the speed of Sublime and the power of WebStorm. Perhaps this is the best software that Microsoft has ever created.

JavaScript IntelliSense allows Visual Studio Code to provide you with useful hints and auto-completion features while you code.

Visual Studio Code has integrated Git control, guaranteeing speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.

There's a new release of Visual Studio Code every month. If you are one of the insiders then releases are daily.

ESLint integrates great. You can define your rules trough .eslintrc.* as usual and vs code will autofix your code on save. So your code is always in style.

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript.

It's really nice to see how the code editor evolves. Every month there is a new version with great communication of new features and changes.

Task runners display lists of available tasks and performing these tasks is as simple as a click of the mouse.

All it takes is one stop for all the features many people need.

Snippets are templates that will insert text for you and adapt it to their context, and in VSC they are highly customizable.

The ease of getting assistance and finding tutorials is increasing as the community grows.

It leverages TypeScript compiler functionality to statically type check JS (type inference, JSDoc types) with "javascript.implicitProjectConfig.checkJs": true option.

Excellent Python plugin, originally created by Don Jayamanne, now hired by Microsoft to extend and maintain the extension.

The Omnisharp plugin is very powerful providing full sln, csproj, and project.json support.

It supports pretty web rtl languages like arabic languages when most of other editors don't support it.

These features allow you to have a glance at code without opening it as a whole in a separate tab. Moreover, editing is allowed.

Tower has a good-looking interface and consists of 3 main views - services, repositories and repository.

• Services view for managing integrations with hosting services like GitHub, Bitbucket and Beanstalk.

• Repositories view for organizing local and remote repositories into folders and getting general overview about them.

• Repo view that consists of two main subviews:

  • Working copy view shows modified files and their diff and allows wrapping up changes in a commit.

  • History shows commits alongside metadata and projects file structure.

Additionally, it allows performing various tasks such as merging branches via drag & drop, search allows searching by message, commit hash, author, committer and file and there's a quick open that allows fuzzy-searching for folder names.

Tower shows conflicting files, their authors and the commit that made changes. It then allows selecting which files should be used in the final result.

Tower comes with built-in support for Git LFS. Handy when working with large files.

Git-flow provide a consistent development process by defining a strict branching model that is great for managing large projects. T2 allows setting up and integrating into repos that follow this model.

Tower covers most of the daily tasks that a developer may need to complete. It shows only what you need for the most common tasks without overwhelming the user.

If you are a student, you can get your free Tower Pro license here.

Many Git actions can be undone in Tower simply by using the keyboard shortcut CMD+Z. Examples: Deleting branches and files, staging changes, rebasing & merging branches, or publishing a branch on a remote

Tower offers user profiles. You can then connect GPG keys with your profiles, sign commits and see which commits have been signed and by who.