Issue #135  (Turn UI Sketches Into Code)11/20/24

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Have you ever wondered if Visual Studio Code would ever fall from top spot as the IDE of choice for most developers and programmers today? It seems like something that may never happen, but I'm sure that's what a lot of people thought about previously popular IDEs and even libraries like jQuery.

There are a few different surveys we could look at to see how VS Code has grown and also to see if any other IDEs have started to gain any momentum. For our purposes here, let's take a look at the popular Stack Overflow Developer Survey over the past 5+ years.

First, in 2019 there was a "Most Popular Development Environments" section that showed VS Code in first place at 50.7%.
 
IDE Usage in 2019

In 2020, there didn't seem to be the same question or any discussion of IDEs, so there's no indication if there was any growth in that area. Maybe I missed it? But it doesn't seem to be there.

In 2021, they went back to a question about most popular IDEs, which once again had VS Code at the top, with a much larger percentage share.
 
IDE Usage in 2021

There were also questions about what IDEs people 'love' and 'worked with vs. wanted to work with' that VS Code did well in, though Neovim was the top IDE in 'most loved'.

In 2022, the most popular IDE category remained and once again VS Code was at the top with some growth compared to the previous year.
 
IDE Usage in 2022

Next we move to 2023 which, percentage-wise, is the first slight dip in usage or popularity for VS Code. Once again there are also questions about how much people like their tools, which you may want to check out.
 
IDE Usage in 2023

And finally, the most recent survey, 2024, shows that VS Code continues to maintain its lead at about the same percentage of use.
 
IDE Usage in 2024

Again, you could dive deeper into the numbers by looking at 'most loved' which they now call 'admired and desired'. Maybe I'll consider that for a future issue, as that may give us an indication of what the future of VS Code's popularity is.

Now on to this week's hand-picked links!
 

VS Code Tools

CursorChat Downloader — A VS Code extension that lets you export and view your Cursor AI chat history, browse through your past conversations, view code snippets, and save chat histories from all your workspaces.

Commit Message Translator — A VS Code extension powered by the DeepL Translate API that translates commit messages into different written/spoken languages.

Meco — Free your newsletters from the inbox. Move your newsletters to a space built for reading and declutter your inbox in seconds.   Sponsor 

UI Sketcher — A VS Code extension that allows you to turn UI sketches into code using the GPT-4 Vision API, currently tested with a Tailwind and Svelte stack.


VS Code Theme of the Week

Supabase Theme — A dark theme that's fashioned after the colors associated with the popular Firebase alternative, Supabase. You can see the Supabase green influence in the syntax highlighting as well as the UI.

Supabase Theme

It has just one version of the theme with good contrast and, the green can be more prevalent depending on the language being viewed. It's not as noticeable in JavaScript (as shown above) but you can definitely see more green in HTML and other languages.

VS Code Articles & Videos

📺 The All New GitHub Copilot Experience — From the VS Code YouTube channel, this is a roundup of announcements made at the GitHub Universe tech event, along with a look at some extensions made by the VS Code team.

Introducing Copilot Edits — One of the features discussed in the above video is detailed more extensively in this blog post, which is a new way to use GitHub Copilot in VS Code.

The Morning Paper for Tech — Want a byte-sized version of Hacker News that takes just a few minutes to read? Try TLDR's free daily newsletter. It covers the most interesting tech, startup, and programming stories in just 5 minutes. No sports and no politics.   Sponsor 

MongoDB, Microsoft Team Up to Enhance Copilot in VS Code — From the MongoDB team, an announcement about the public preview of MongoDB’s extension to GitHub Copilot in VS Code.

Best of the Rest

Windsurf — An AI-powered IDE from Codeium, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, that can both collaborate with you like a Copilot and tackle complex tasks independently like an Agent.

Bluefish — A 25-year old text editor for programmers and web developers that's available on Linux, Mac OSX, Windows, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD.

JavaScript Web Projects: 20 Projects to Build Your Portfolio — 33 hours of course material on HTML, CSS, and modern JavaScript, to level up your skills and build a portfolio.  Sponsor 

WebStorm and Rider Are Now Free for Non-Commercial Use — From the JetBrains Blog, an announcement about a change in the licensing model for two of their products.

Suggestions?

If you have any link suggestions, including a tool, article, or other resource related to VS Code or another IDE, you can hit reply, send it via DM on X, or via chat on Bluesky.

That's it for this issue.

Happy VS Coding!
Louis
VSCode.Email
@LouisLazaris
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