We need an official statement on the state of Visual Studio Code as an officially supported IDE for Unity development.
As you are likely aware, debugging is a vital part of the development process and for many a deal breaker when it comes to picking an editor.
It is not appropriate that Unity touts support of Visual Studio Code when there is no official way to attach a debugger.
Edit: Just saw this thread ( Update on the Visual Studio Code package ), apparently Visual Studio Code is no longer officially supported. Why is this information so hard to find?
The ones listed specifically are supported. All others are “use at your own risk”.
FWIW Visual Studio Code isn’t exactly an IDE. It’s a text editor with extensions. It will never sufficiently replace an IDE that has integrated language and framework support with compilers, debuggers, analysis and design tools.
Sorry to necro but just updated VS Code on Windows today and it has warned me that the Unity Debugger Extension is deprecated and no longer being maintained. I wonder why Unity even has a package in Pack Man for VS Code support when we can’t debug code with it. For that reason I still only use Visual Studio 2022 for code editing and debugging with Unity.
Probably for backwards compatibility, like projects made with Unity 2019/2020-ish before it got deprecated. VSCode is a crudge at best for development (almost like using Notepad++). IMO it was okay for artists to change some bits of scripts here and there but never any more.
For non-commercial use there is VS Community and for an IDE that’s actually got great integration with Unity AND is also cheaper than VS commercial take a look at Rider.
What are you talking about? Just because VSCode doesn’t come with all features when you open it for the first time doesn’t mean it cannot become a full-fledged C# IDE after installing some extensions. VSCode can support C# intellisense, analyzers, decompiling, refactoring, debugging and version control – what else do you need to meet your apparently very high bar to be considered a “proper” IDE?
FWIW, I’ve tried both Rider and VS and always went back to VSCode, because I found it the most comfortable to work with and it comes with all the features I need.
Also, it’s just a tool. People can create great work with Notepad++, Paint, visual coding or whatever they are comfortable with, the result is what counts and not how “serious” the tools are you are using.
You’d have to have a dozen more plugins to make VSCode on par with IDEs. How about Refactoring, for one? Static code analysis? Formatting cleanup? Running unit tests? Test coverage? Decompiling assemblies? Viewing compiled IL code? And so on. True, some of that are (paid) plugins for IDEs as well but they are essential tools a professional programmer wouldn’t want to miss out.
The right tools do matter A LOT!
Any handyman can tell you the difference between a professional grade electric tool vs the alternative you can get at Walmart for $99. You can go some way with it, but not all the way to building larger things without either you or the tool breaking, or just wasting time and nerves.
There’s a reason why Photoshop > Paint and artists are more than willing to pay for it, too.
The official free C# extension supports refactoring, Roslyn analyzers, code formatting, unit tests and decompiling referenced assemblies. Test coverage and viewing compiled IL is provided by additional extensions.
Anything you mentioned so far is possible in VSCode. Those features are not as extensive as in other commercial IDEs but saying VSCode is not a C# IDE is absurd.
You came into this thread of a user complaining about Unity dropping VSCode support and their abysmal communication and, instead of being supportive or helpful, you kept deriding VSCode (“isn’t exactly an IDE”, “a text editor with extensions”, “will never sufficiently replace an IDE”, “is a crudge at best for development”, “almost like using Notepad++”, “okay for artists to change some bits of scripts here and there but never any more”) without having an informed understanding of its capabilities.
Your comments sound to me like your belittling beginners, artists and anyone who prefers a simpler tool over something they need to spend a lot of time to learn. Sure, tools matter and investing in them is worth it for many. But people can also make clever, creative and great works with just basic tools – paying for Photoshop doesn’t make you a great artist and paying for an IDE doesn’t make you a great game creator. Try to be helpful to people by suggesting better tools but no need to harp on about the tool choices of others – which might have been made with a great deal of consideration.
Correct, I am pretty opinionated about some things and VSCode is one of them because it is lacking in all aspects all the while there was always a functional, feature rich VS Community available for free. I’ve had to endure these discussions before with professionals getting paid for their work. There was not one convincing argument pro VSCode besides it being legally free for commercial work (the irony!).
And ever since Unity dropped support for it, it’s just stubborn to keep using VSCode. It’s gradually going to get worse until it won’t work anymore. Then what? You ARE going to have to learn a new tool.
You can make great stuff with limited tools, but it is just not sensible to do so unless you want to prove a point. Like making great art with Paint. Who does that? Experienced artists trying to prove a point, and artists who are stubbornly fixated on the one tool and their particular, tried and proven (but likely grinding) workflow. Specifically beginners are well advised to stick with the tools of the trade because they will get a lot more help when using what is being used the most. Hardly anybody is going to teach making great game art with Paint to stay with the example.
I don’t know how anything can be called a “simpler tool” when it requires you to know to go to a website explaining how to set it up and even once you’ve installed it correctly it may or may not work the first time and may or may not continue working after that. By itself it’s great but with Unity it’s not at all beginner friendly.
So, I’m a fallstack dev originally c/c++ and used to working with visual studio. HOWEVER, Vs code is great for higher level languages as , well it’s just fast, I wouldn’t use it if you paid me for c++, However for C# mono in unity, it’s good enough for most.
Whilst I agree working on C# in other domains, such as a stand alone project should be done in visual studio. The elitist attitute really ignores the different use cases of ‘why’ you would want to use both IDE’s.
In summary: as many Toolchains as needed for different use cases should be maintained.
For me, it’s a shame to be using unity again with visual studio and waisting 5 mins waiting for unncessary tools to load up. and clutter the work space.
The elitist attitude is mine, and I‘m not speaking for Unity. And it‘s not elitist but an expectation that professionals should use professional tools, especially if they are as affordable as VS or Rider these days (these IDEs used to cost high 3-digit to lower 4-digit numbers!!). Just to clear up my point of view.
Would you care to elaborate on why it‘s good enough for C# but not anymore for C++?
5 Min. loading time is ridiculous even for an older version of VS (2019+ has improved load speed noticeably). Did you actually time this with a current VS version? Perhaps also with all the optional plugins disabled?
If it is really 5 minutes there‘s got to be a ton load of extraneous tools installed (20 years ago I used to do full installs out of a „I have to have it all“ notion but that‘s going to clutter the IDE) and/or the system is just slow to begin with, like working with 8 GB of RAM and working off a slow spinning disk.
Visual Studio should never take five minutes from a cold boot. While typing up this post I created a new project in Unity and with the help of the stopwatch system built into Windows which I didn’t know existed until today I timed the start up for Visual Studio 2022.
Five seconds (technically a little less than that thanks to being slow at turning off the stopwatch) is all it took my computer (5950X, 64GB RAM, PCIe 3 SSD) to go from double clicking the script in Unity to being ready to edit in VS 2022 and that includes the time it took to start Visual Studio after not having opened it at all in months.
A less expensive computer will take longer than mine but it should never take minutes to start VS. If it’s taking that long it’s a sign there is something seriously wrong. Worst case I’ve seen was one minute with an HDD on a decade plus computer (Phenom II X4, 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD).
i’m a full stack developer as well. I’m pretty sure everyone on my team is on visual studio code. If I asked my boss for a visual studio license, he’d say “use vscode”. These IDEs really cost too much except for organizations already stuck with other proprietary technologies and licenses.
For IDE I mainly need intellisense, linting, formatting, typescript features, local history, and version control integration to at least display history/blame (gitlens). For debugging I use other things but I’d love to just stay in my IDE if I can.
If you truly cared about those you would be on Godot right now not Unity. Visual Studio is a few gigabytes at most to install for use with Unity. Unity is >5GB per release. VS is near instant if your computer isn’t a dinosaur. Unity is slow even with a high end system.
Arguments against Visual Studio are only sound while they’re in a vacuum. Once you start comparing it to just about any other application you use in conjunction with Unity including Unity itself they stop holding water.
I just came to this thread and after reading it i haven’t really seen much of that attitude. I did saw mostly arguments on why people liked/opted to use Visual studio code.
On the contrary, i did see many “Arguments against Visual Studio Code”. And they weren’t a few.
How can someone call itself a engineer while despising a tool because it isn’t full featured is a curious question. Given the apparent emotional/intellectual intolerance for a tool, i don’t expect any reasonable answer to it.
