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Add to SafariWhen comparing Visual Studio Code vs Fork, the Slant community recommends Fork for most people. In the question“What are the best Git clients for Windows?” Fork is ranked 2nd while Visual Studio Code is ranked 4th.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Extendable through plug-ins
Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plug-ins available to extend its functionality.
Pro TypeScript integration
There is very solid TypeScript integration in Visual Studio Code. Both are developed by Microsoft and VSC itself is written in TypeScript.
Pro Integrated debugging
VSC includes debugging tools for Node.js, TypeScript, and JavaScript.
Pro Ready to use out of the box
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.
Pro Integrated terminal
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.
Pro Great performance
For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well.
Pro Libre/open source
Released under the MIT License.
Pro Fast and powerful
VS-Code has the speed of Sublime and the power of WebStorm. Perhaps this is the best software that Microsoft has ever created.
Pro JavaScript IntelliSense support
JavaScript IntelliSense allows Visual Studio Code to provide you with useful hints and auto-completion features while you code.
Pro Embedded Git control
Visual Studio Code has integrated Git control, guaranteeing speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.
Pro Updated frequently
There's a new release of Visual Studio Code every month. If you are one of the insiders then releases are daily.
Pro ESLint integration
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.
Pro Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript
Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript.
Pro Active development
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.
Pro Integrated task runners
Task runners display lists of available tasks and performing these tasks is as simple as a click of the mouse.
Pro It has gotten really good
All it takes is one stop for all the features many people need.
Pro Custom snippets support
Snippets are templates that will insert text for you and adapt it to their context, and in VSC they are highly customizable.
Pro Huge community behind it
The ease of getting assistance and finding tutorials is increasing as the community grows.
Pro JS typechecking
It leverages TypeScript compiler functionality to statically type check JS (type inference, JSDoc types) with "javascript.implicitProjectConfig.checkJs": true option.
Pro Python support
Excellent Python plugin, originally created by Don Jayamanne, now hired by Microsoft to extend and maintain the extension.
Pro Good support for new Emmet syntax
Pro High fidelity C# plugin
The Omnisharp plugin is very powerful providing full sln, csproj, and project.json support.
Pro Support RTL languages
It supports pretty web rtl languages like arabic languages when most of other editors don't support it.
Pro Inline definition picking and usages finding
These features allow you to have a glance at code without opening it as a whole in a separate tab. Moreover, editing is allowed.
Pro Fast and easy to use
Pro Comfortable when staging line-by-line changes
This feature is superior to the one that is implemented by SourceTree as it does not reset the file scroll view to the top of the file after each stage.
If you do feature-specific commits after some time of development - it's very important to be able to easily compose the commit from different line-based changes.
Pro Smart Diff is very handy
Pro Tabbed interface
Several repos can be open at once in individual tabs, so it's trivial to switch back and forth between them.
Pro Overall aesthetic
The GUI components are flawless on the Mac. It is expected to be a similar experience on Windows. Once you realize that you can filter by branch, your appreciation for the product will go up dramatically.
Pro Dark theme support
Pro Highlights the difference within a line
Pro Merge Conflict Resolution is great
Pro Comfortable keyboard shortcuts
Pro Repositories with uncommitted changes have a * next to their name
This is an update from previous versions.
Cons
Con Embedded Git isn't powerful enough
You can do nothing but to track changes, stage them and commit. No history, visualization, rebasing or cherry-picking – these things are left to git console or external git client.
Con The autocomplete and code check is not as powerful as the one on WebStorm
Sometimes it doesn't tell you if you made a typo in a method name or if a method is not used and several other important features.
Con File search is extremely slow
It's absolutely not possible to use this tool with big projects given how long it takes to search for files.
Con Project search limits results
Because file search is so slow your results are limited in order to simulate a faster search.
Con Very bad auto import
Con Generalized
VS Code is a general code/scripting IDE built to be lightweight and for people familiar with their language of choice, not directly comparable to Visual Studio in power or scope.
Con Memory hog
Allegedly, VS Code is "lightweight". Yet, running multiple instances of it at once, you may get many "out of memory" messages from Windows despite 16 GB RAM. (While of course also running other things. The point is the comparison with some other IDEs/editors where running them alongside the same number of other applications doesn't cause Windows to run out of memory)
Con Poor error fix suggestions
Error detection and suggestions/fixes are poor compared to IntelliJ platforms
Con A "me too" offering from MS, far behind other well established editors that it attempts to clone
Other IDEs specific to a language often offer better tools for deep programming.
Con Slow launch time
Slower than it's competitors, e.g. Sublime Text.
Con Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags
Con Have no good default js style analyzer
In WebStorm there is analyzer that checks for warnings and highlight this in yellow, here you cannot find or add it even with plugins. It is possible to have it as errors with linter but while you are actively changing file that's not very nice.
Con .sass linting is terrible
Con Is not an IDE, is a text editor
Con Still a young client, thus not as feature rich
This git GUI client is quite young compared to industry old-timers like git-tower 2 or SourceTree. So it's not as feature rich as you'd like. Still a very capable client for a simple day-to-day work.
Con No Linux version
This git client is not compatible with Linux making the life harder for the developers that work on both, MacOS and some Linux distro.
Con Requires granting access to your git projects for the developer of the app
