back to article Microsoft Visual Studio Code replumbed for better Python taming

Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, the company's Electron-based source code editor for Linux, macOS and Windows, has been bestowed with the company's Python Language Server, making it more fluent in the popular programming language. The language server, Microsoft explains, powers the company's IntelliSense autocomplete system, …

  1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
    Facepalm

    To enable it?

    ... set an Enable flag to 'false':

    "python.jediEnabled": false

    Obvious! Probably just the cold meds that I don't "get it".

    1. Notas Badoff

      Re: To enable it?

      These aren't the truth values you're looking for. ... Move along.

      1. stephanh

        explaining Jedi

        Jedi is a autocompletion/static analysis engine which is widely used in the Python ecosystem. For example, by IPython/Jupyter notebook, and also by Vim's YouCompleteMe plugin. And so far by Visual Studio Code.

        That's why you *disable* Jedi to get the new thing.

        I suppose it is sad but unsurprising that Microsoft chose to roll their own thing rather than contribute to Jedi.

        1. rmullen0

          Re: explaining Jedi

          Microsoft "rolled their own thing" because it is not just for Python. It started out with C# and Visual Basic.

        2. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: explaining Jedi

          "That's why you *disable* Jedi to get the new thing."

          oh yeah, THAT explains *everything*! (see icon)

          Seriously, though, how do I shut off BOTH "features"?

          (oh _I_ know - use 'pluma' like I normally do, get the syntax highlighting but none of that other *@#$%*, _ESPECIALLY_ lack-of-intelli-sense! )

          if I wanted an IDE written (as if it is) in Java (script), I'd use Eclipse. Or 'Android Studio'.

          Hey Micro-shaft, how about this: STOP with the 'new, shiny' and just FIX WHAT YOU HAVE, and GIVE US BACK MORE CUSTOMIZATION.

          When I _must_ winders-code, I use DevStudio 2010. Why? NO 2D FLATSO and no "the Metro" nor UWP! And it builds W7 applications WITHOUT [after a few targeted configuration options] the @#$% *&%$ F$#%+&^ '.NOT' in it!!!

          /me points out that WITHOUT the '.Not', shared runtime, and shared MFC dependencies (i.e. static link EVERYTHING), an application built for W7 wouldn't have "those issues" if running under Wine. I've read the licenses about shipping these things, about NOT installing them on non-windows operating systems. So I want people to be FREE to use MY applications wherever they want. Even for free OSS stuff, they're still 'customers' and _I_ want to treat them THAT way. [how are YOU guys doing in that department, eh Micro-shaft??? yeah I thought so]

          on a semi-related note: Python in DevStudio. I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.

      2. LucreLout

        Re: To enable it?

        These aren't the truth values you're looking for. ... Move along.

        Very funny you are. Upvotes you will have.

    2. Dave559 Silver badge

      "python.jediEnabled": false

      Well, this is Microsith [1] that we’re talking about, so attempting to nullify the Jedi is one of their main objectives.

      [1] I miss that website…

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'IntelliSense autocomplete system'

    ...."Visual Studio has long been recognized for the quality of its IntelliSense (code analysis and suggestions) across all languages"....

    -----

    For our C++ projects IntelliSense is unusable!

    So does IntelliSense actually work for anyone?

    Non-free/paid alternatives seem to sell well too:

    -----

    https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/6p8307/visualassistx_vs_resharper_c_vs_others/

    1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: 'IntelliSense autocomplete system'

      I have used it extensively in Visual Studio for C## and Python and it works well. The again, for all I know it's things like ReSharper (which you mentioned/linked) which makes it actually usable? I've not run without for so long, I'd probably be paralysed without it.

      That's not a good thing, it just occurred to me... I should mend my ways.

      1. Wanting more

        Re: 'IntelliSense autocomplete system'

        I've avoided using Resharper so far as I know someday I know I'll be without it. With every release MS add more and more features to the IDE anyway.

      2. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: 'IntelliSense autocomplete system'

        "That's not a good thing, it just occurred to me... I should mend my ways."

        NOT coding in C-Pound is probably a good start in the right direction

        1. jaywin

          Re: 'IntelliSense autocomplete system'

          > C-Pound

          Do you see pounds and flats in musical notation too?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: 'IntelliSense autocomplete system'

            "> C-Pound

            Do you see pounds and flats in musical notation too?"

            People find so many strange ways to refer to the reverse C hashtag,,,,

            1. Deltics
              Coat

              Re: 'IntelliSense autocomplete system'

              I think perhaps the more pertinent question would be where have you ever seen crotchets, minims, quavers, brieves or clefs, let alone sharps or flats ... in programming source code ?

              Eh ?

              '#' has numerous "names" in different contexts. It's use as "sharp" in C# is purely whimsical, not due to any domain accuracy. As such, C-Octothorpe or C-Gate or C-Hash or C-Pound are equally valid whimsy (just not MS compatible whimsy).

              1. jaywin

                Re: 'IntelliSense autocomplete system'

                '#' has numerous "names" in different contexts. It's use as "sharp" in C# is purely whimsical, not due to any domain accuracy. As such, C-Octothorpe or C-Gate or C-Hash or C-Pound are equally valid whimsy (just not MS compatible whimsy).

                That's all very nice, but '♯' only has one name in any context, and that's the symbol that is used in the official name. It's only for typing convenience that it's referred to as C#. From Wikipedia (go there for the citations)...

                Due to technical limitations of display (standard fonts, browsers, etc.) and the fact that the sharp symbol is not present on most keyboard layouts, the number sign was chosen to approximate the sharp symbol in the written name of the programming language. This convention is reflected in the ECMA-334 C# Language Specification. However, when it is practical to do so (for example, in advertising or in box art), Microsoft uses the intended musical symbol.

    2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Intelli-thing for SQL Server 2014

      For SQL scripting... I haven't looked at it closely, maybe it can be improved. My issues with it:

      1. If you write something wrong, it gets underlined red. So you correct it... and it takes a second or two for the red mark-up to go away. Long enough to think "What else is wrong with... oh I get it."

      2. One error is to refer to a data table that doesn't exist. So, create the data table... the "error" stays marked as an error, even though it isn't. If the list of existing objects can be refreshed, I'd like to know how.

  3. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Where are the holy relics

    raise ExorcismRequired("This is not the IDE you are looking for")

    1. streaky

      Re: Where are the holy relics

      Problem with the memes is it's far and away the best cross platform IDE that money doesn't need to buy. In fact it's very close to being the best IDE full stop.

      1. rob miller

        Re: Where are the holy relics

        Does it have multi monitor support yet? That put me off on my initial investigations....

        1. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: Where are the holy relics

          "multi monitor support"

          If you had 2 monitors for the same desktop, probably works 'as-is'. If you want 2 desktops on 2 monitors, in theory it should work if you open a separate window on the 2nd desktop, or moved a 2nd window to it, THAT might do what you want.

          Well, then again I'm thinking of a Mate desktop here, so maybe Win-10-nic is too brain damaged to do something that's otherwise SO simple to do (for the last 15+ years) with Gnome, KDE, and now Mate desktops (and Cinnamon and vtwm and fluxbox and xfce and everything ELSE that has multi-desktop window managers, like practically ALL of them).

          /me tried using right-click 'float' on a tab in VisualStudio 2010, but all it did was stay INSIDE the same @#$% IDE "one window to rule them all" as a floating MDI child. That's just freaking LAME. Micro-shaft should make it work like Firefox's tabbed IDE, where you can drag a tab outside the window and create a new one, or drag it back and put it inside the tabbed list again. This stuff is _NOT_ "Rocket Surgery" after all!!! yeah, I _have_ to port my non-windows application to windows for the sake of customers, but I do most of the work NOT on windows, muahahahaha! VS is just open so I can conveniently test-build it after moving source into svn and then onto the winders box... (then re-build, etc., make sure the mostly-POSIX code also works in windows - I'm really happy how wxWidgets is so MFC-like that it makes doing an IDE with it practical for me, with parallel MFC-specific code in the same source - maybe 10% of it like that)

  4. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    Re: So inferences that might be used to make suggestions about statically typed code won't work

    Sounds like this will encourage bad programming habits.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: So inferences that might be used to make suggestions about statically typed code won't work

      "Sounds like this will encourage bad programming habits"

      Too late. C-pound, Python, and Micro-shaft (in general) already done that.

  5. Joerg

    Visual Studio 2017 is still a mess full of bugs and no ISO installer...

    Visual Studio 2017 is still a mess full of bugs and no ISO installer...

    ..Microsoft at its worst. They don't put an offline installer. You have to create your own downloading from their slow messed up servers that can even corrupt files when you download.

    They refuse to put ISO versions of Visual Studio 2017.

    And Visual Studio 2017 is still unstable, unreliable and full of bugs.

    The worst of Microsoft like never before. They are doing worse than the Windows ME era...

    1. Palpy

      Re: Visual Studio 2017, no ISO installer...

      I noticed.

      I work on an air-gapped system (for ... exactly ... 6 more days before retiring) and for quite some time I depended on some stuff written originally in VB6 and then ported to .net. Fortunately, I ported everything to Python a couple of years ago. Python is easy to install on even an air-gapped Windows system; not so much VS. A few scripts to replace the exe files, and I never looked back.

      All that said, my coding skills are trivial compared to those of most commentards. I'll shut up now.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Visual Studio 2017 is still a mess full of bugs and no ISO installer...

      But...but...the marketing person says you're going to "enjoy" seeing suggestions made about your syntax errors.

      There are times when the possession of a tall building with a top floor balcony and very large cucumber frames at the bottom would enable me to enjoy a premium* experience by pushing the language abusers off said balcony.

      *means "made of glass"

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Visual Studio 2017 is still a mess full of bugs and no ISO installer...

        I just wrote a semi-long post about free installers (including one I wrote) and then realized that the complaint was about the VS installer, and not about being unable to (easily) build your own SETUP image with an ISO as the output...

        When I go to the MSDN subscriber download web page I can usually download a DVD ISO for the DevStudio "whatever version" so it's worth pointing out that for MSDN subscribers (no small chunk of change, annual subscription) you can DL an ISO and install it THAT way. For some cloudy freebie "ghetto" version, yeah, the installer must suck pretty hard, because ultimately they want you to use the 'pay for' version, right?

        I haven't checked for an ISO of the latest DevStudio, though. I certainly don't want a cloudy installer because they *SUCK*. But I've DL'd a 2010 ISO, a 2012 ISO, etc. before. I only use the 2010 version since the rest of them SUCKED as far as I was concerned. I hated it when 2012 went all "the metro" even for a W7 install. YUCK! I even installed it on "Ape" to at least "give it a try". Bleah. Waste of time. But yeah you need the ISO images around for 'whatever' 'in case you need it'.

        (/me recently had to DL a Win-10-nic ISO - I've got it, haven't installed it in a VM yet, but I'll need to test a winders application with it at some point in the near future... yuck - the things I'll do for potential customers, they make me 'feel dirty' sometimes)

        1. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: Visual Studio 2017 is still a mess full of bugs and no ISO installer...

          I stand corrected on the Visual Studio Code installer - there's no ISO! I checked the MSDN download area for it... LAME! (since it allegedly runs on Linux, you'd think an MSDN subscriber could get an ISO for a Linux version without cloudy-BS, but NOOoooo...)

          icon - because - facepalm

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Visual Studio 2017 is still a mess full of bugs and no ISO installer...

            "I stand corrected on the Visual Studio Code installer - there's no ISO! I checked the MSDN download area for it... LAME! (since it allegedly runs on Linux, you'd think an MSDN subscriber could get an ISO for a Linux version without cloudy-BS, but NOOoooo...)"

            Visual Studio Code is small - it's ~75MB. If you're in Windows-land, you can have a zip or exe. If you're a penguin, you can have an rpm or deb. There's also an option for the followers of the fruit.

            https://code.visualstudio.com/#alt-downloads

          2. AceRimmer

            Re: Visual Studio 2017 is still a mess full of bugs and no ISO installer...

            The offline option is available - as long as you have another computer that is online

            https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/install-vs-inconsistent-quality-network

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. streaky

      Re: Visual Studio 2017 is still a mess full of bugs and no ISO installer...

      Visual Studio Code *is not* Visual Studio. They're completely unrelated. Are people actually getting them confused? Actually yeah that is on Microsoft really. If you're off Windows, use your package manager. If you're on windows why on earth would an iso be a thing, it's tiny and there's an MSI. Plus also it's 2018, connect up your 56k modem.

  6. rmullen0

    If you want proper Intellisense, use a statically typed language

    like C#, a superior language.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: If you want proper Intellisense, use a statically typed language

      "C#, a superior language."

      Heh, nice joke! Oh wait, you were serious?

      1. streaky

        Re: If you want proper Intellisense, use a statically typed language

        C# is a nice language, but the statically typed bit and relationship to intellitype is pure unadulterated nonsense.

  7. rmullen0

    Visual Studio Code != Visual Studio 2017

    Visual Studio Code is not the same thing as Visual Studio 2017. Some of you seem to be confused about that.

  8. Camilla Smythe

    It is available as an opt-in preview

    Hopefully the opt-in is GDPR compliant.

    Anyway as I have previously mentioned all of your programming languages are self ego serving undecipherable wank, and fuck off with your 'once you know one you can deal with them all', that get compiled down through layers of shite to shite.

    I've got an EVO 250GB SSD.

    Again... Can I define a variable record and save an array of it to what is basically memory? Can I fuck. I have to use someone's flavour of a Shitty Base and everyone has a different opinion about which Shitty Base is the best Shitty Base and the syntax used to set it up and access it.

    Thank fuck for Global Warming. Unfortunately...

    https://twitter.com/EveForster/status/1020616441727463424

    The Dolphin is slightly pissed off that it evolved on a planet that became infested by Idiots.

  9. HmmmYes

    I have enough complexity and unreliable software in my life.

    I dont want to add to it with a proprietary gui-debugger-whatever.

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