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Yeah, I have a ex-coworker who probably still uses their favorite IDE which was discontinued around 2003. They've got all the keybindings and workflows memorized. It may work for them, but there's no way I would use that IDE. I would always cringe when we would work together, just watching them painfully carry out simple tasks like searching.

Speaking of searches, one helpful feature that VS Code has is the ability to open search results in an editor (then you can search within the results, etc). I'd also say that multiple cursors is another killer feature that eclipse doesn't have.

Nik said:

What does bug me about Eclipse is the slow startup time, memory usage, looping validation tasks (that can't be aborted) etc. Hmm. Yes, I'll definitely have a look at VSC

Yep. I find that VS Code is reasonably speedy as long as you're not trying to work with a 150 MB JSON file or a minified JS file with a single 1 million character line. There are certain edge cases which will bring VS Code to its knees.

Nik said:

PS. I have a hard time believing that 48% of all developers use Mac! ;-)

Haha yeah I think it depends on what field you're in or which company you work at. I think Macs are popular in some companies because of:

- prestige

- hardware (design, not raw power) (horrible butterfly keyboard notwithstanding)

- Windows/linux compatibility (because they like the hardware design)

I've heard Macs referred to as "Linux with money".

Having developed on both:

- Aging desktop PCs and/or bottom-of-the-line Dells (both Windows and Linux)

- A Macbook

I can say I prefer the latter. I wouldn't say no to a nice, top-of-the-line Windows laptop, though (like a top-of-the line Dell or maybe a Surface)

I will also say that Macbooks have the best trackpad I've ever used -- there's no competition, IMO.

Another great modern feature VS Code has which Eclipse lacks (just IMO) is the quick file switcher (CMD/CTRL-P) where you can just type a few characters and the list of all your open editors is filtered via fuzzy search (so typing "my" matches "monkey.c".)

Startup time doesn't bother me as I usually just keep eclipse open - plus I have over 200 apps in my workspace.

The strong use of key board short cuts is one of the reasons I'm not that impressed with VS code.  I like to drive with a mouse and just taking your hand off the mouse slows the work flow. 

jim_m_58 said:

Startup time doesn't bother me as I usually just keep eclipse open - plus I have over 200 apps in my workspace.

I'd love to see the results of a poll as to whether this is the typical use case for a CIQ developer. As a CIQ hobbyist, I use my personal devices for things other than CIQ. The only time I ever constantly kept Eclipse open was probably when I used it for work.

I also don't keep VS Code, or any editor, constantly open on non-work devices. If I do need to restart VS Code on my work laptop for some reason, I do appreciate that it's fairly quick. Same goes for opening multiple instances (which isn't really an eclipse thing, I realize, due to the emphasis on workspaces.)

jim_m_58 said:

The strong use of key board short cuts is one of the reasons I'm not that impressed with VS code.  I like to drive with a mouse and just taking your hand off the mouse slows the work flow. 

That's funny because, as mentioned before, I have the opposite opinion. Unless you are proficient at typing with one hand, it seems that minimizing use of the mouse/trackpad can only make you more efficient. The great thing about the heavy emphasis on the command palette is you don't have to memorize the shortcuts for infrequently used commands, yet they're still there at your fingertips. With Eclipse, I definitely appreciated the CTRL-3 Quick Action menu.

Agree to disagree, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

flowstate said:

Agree to disagree, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's actually what I'm saying but in a larger scope.

Maybe not replace Eclipse but have VS Code along with Eclipse If a dev prefers one over the other, why not let them "disagree" with one or the other.

I couldn't begin to guess the number of devs that have been doing CIQ for years and using Eclipse and may not want to change.

200 apps?! No wonder you don't close Eclipse, it wouldn't work with the three month release cycle!

I assume that most CIQ-projects are not that huge so I'm guessing the resistance will not be that intense.

It's probably unlikely that Garmin will support both environments in the long run

Been doing CIQ for many years and have 50 apps in the store, another 10 that are "beta, a bunch of test apps, and some in progress,  10 Barrel projects.  They add up.

Just timed it.  It takes me 6 seconds to open Eclipse with that workspace.  It took under a second to close and save. (did it twice to make sure).  Windows 10 desktop.

And all the little usability improvements that VS Code brings to the table add up, as well as the various annoyances of Eclipse. Again I'll point to multiple cursors, which is incredibly helpful for making simultaneous edits to similar fragments of code. In the past one might write a macro to do this kind of repetitive task, or just grit their teeth and bang out the same keystrokes over and over again.

Speaking of large projects, just being able to quickly find an open file by name using CTRL/CMD-P is a godsend. The closest thing in Eclipse is CTRL-SHIFT-E (switch to editor), but you can't filter that list by name. Or maybe "open resource", but that doesn't support fuzzy search.It also doesn't show results right away. (e.g. If I'm searching for a file in "bin/", I have to type "bin/" and not "b", "bi" or "bin". VS Code's quick file opener also respects files ignored by .gitignore -- Eclipse's resource opener doesn't. It's really the little things that make a difference, IMO.

I also revisited Quick Access (CTRL-3) and found it slower and less usable than VS Code's command palette (e.g. it takes up an unnecessarily huge amount of screen real estate). (Which reminds of why I didn't like it as much as I like the command palette)

Not directly related, but usability testing has shown that if a website takes more than a couple of seconds to load, people close it. People are impatient.

Connect IQ has "only" been around for about 6 years. I think if Garmin wants it to stick around for another 6 years (and longer), they realized that things can't stay stagnant.