What is Visual Studio Code (VS Code)? Free Video Tutorial

Get an in-depth understanding of the Visual Studio Code (VS Code), a free code editor made by Microsoft, widely used by various types of coders, including web developers. Learn why it's dominating the industry and its unique features that set it apart from other code editors like TextMate, Dreamweaver, and Brackets.

Key Insights

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a free code editor developed by Microsoft, compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux.
It's popular because it is frequently updated with new features, offers customization through various extensions, and integrates seamlessly with Git and GitHub.
VS Code is unique because it's built with Electron, enabling cross-platform desktop apps to be built with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, thereby allowing it to work in a web browser.
Despite VS Code's popularity, developers still use other code editors like TextMate, Dreamweaver, and Brackets, although some of these have seen a decrease in popularity or are no longer being developed.
Sublime Text was the most popular code editor prior to VS Code and is still being developed and used by some developers.
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Learn what Visual Studio Code is and why it’s so popular with developers, such as web developers.

View the presentation slides shown in the video.

What is Visual Studio Code?

Visual Studio Code (VS Code for short) is a free code editor made by Microsoft. It was initially released in 2015. It’s used by many types of coders, including web developers. It works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Why is VS Code so popular?

It’s a good code editor that’s updated frequently with new features.
There are many extensions that let you add more features or customize how it works.
It’s free.
It integrates with Git to let you track changes to your code.
Microsoft also owns GitHub (where people store their projects in Git repositories), so VS Code nicely integrates with GitHub.

What makes VS Code unique?

VS code is built with Electron, which enables cross-platform desktop apps to be built with web technology like (JavaScript, HTML, & CSS).That means VS Code can work in a web browser. For example on any GitHub repository you can hit the period (.) key and you will start editing with a web version of VS Code without downloading or installing anything! That’s pretty unique.

What about other code editors?

VS Code is currently the most popular code editor and is dominating the industry, but developers have (and still do) use other code editors.

TextMate, Dreamweaver, Brackets, and others have seen their popularity grow and then shrink. Some are no longer being developed (like Atom, which was originally developed by GitHub before Microsoft purchased GitHub).

Sublime Text was the most popular prior VS Code. It’s good, is still being developed, and some developers use it.

A Brief Intro to VS Code

Watch the video above for a quick demonstration of how VS Code works and a few of it’s features, such as opening files and previewing in a web browser.

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