Taking VSCodium for a Spin

As part of my new job on Apache APISIX , I write less Java and Kotlin code.

And when I do, the code is really simple .

My coding hours (unfortunately not days) involve:

• A lot of containerization, including Dockerfile, docker-compose.yml, and soon Kubernetes manifests
• Some Python for scripting jobs - I abandoned Kotlin Scripting for this
• A bit of Lua because I want to learn it as part of my job
• A bit of Rust because I want to learn it for fun
• A bit of Kotlin because I still love it

Because of this, I didn’t renew my IntelliJ Ultimate license early this year, and I fell back on the Community one.

I installed the relevant plugins, and I happily continued my coding routine.

Recently, I noticed that I used only a couple of features:

• Auto-completion, enhanced with the TabNine plugin
• Running and debugging

And that’s all!

I didn’t even use the Docker Compose integration, preferring to type docker compose up and docker compose down. I was actually using a richly featured for trivial tasks! After realizing it, I thought it might be time to try another IDE.

A couple of years ago, VSCode was all the rage. I didn’t pay any attention because I assumed it was mainly for front-end development, and I did a lot of coding on the JVM then.

Things have changed: the VSCode ecosystem has matured, and lots of plugins are available. I decided to give it a shot.

To start with, I looked a bit under the cover:

Microsoft’s vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking. The VSCodium project exists so that you don’t have to download+build from source. This project includes special build scripts that clone Microsoft’s vscode repo, run the build commands, and upload the resulting binaries for you to GitHub releases . These binaries are licensed under the MIT license. Telemetry is disabled. –VSCodium

The paragraph above made me switch from VSCode to VSCodium. Installing it is just a command-line away:

brew install vscodium

VSCodium is built around a plugin architecture. The application is very lightweight, but tons of extensions contain all the possible features you can wish for.

Because I needed to update one of my Python projects, I searched for the relevant plugin. Navigate to Extension, then search for “python”.

I installed the “official” Python extension. As I was there, I also installed the TabNine one.

Getting used to a new IDE is always an investment. It took me three attempts to switch from Eclipse to IntelliJ IDEA. Here are three main problems that I had to solve immediately:

1. Find how to set a breakpoint - it’s the leftmost gutter in the editor view
2. Multiline edit - [Opt + Cmd + Arrow]
3. Remember to save after editing! I had to forget to save after switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ IDEA; now I need to remember it again. Life is a circle.

To use VSCodium during my conference talks, I have two additional requirements:

1. Zooming with the mouse. Go to menu VSCodium > Preferences > Settings and search for “zoom”.
2. View each Git commit and navigate from one to the other. The default Git view is not enough. I installed GitLens , adding the feature to the Git view.

At this point, I think I’m ready to use VSCodium for my next talk.

To go further:

• Visual Studio website
• VSCodium
• Visual Studio Code on GitHub

Originally published at A Java Geek on June 17^th^, 2022

*[IDE]: Integrated Development Environment