If you’re a developer, or someone who has even slightly ventured into the development space, you’ve no doubt seen VSCode being recommended as the code editor to use. And there’s good reason for this. It’s a free editor, and it’s “open source”.
Unfortunately, and rather unsurprisingly, as this is a Microsoft product, it isn’t actually open source for most people. The binaries you download from VSCode’s website are actually non-free, and they contain analytics that collect your data and send it to Microsoft.
There is a way you can get around this, and use a version of VSCode that is actually open source. It’s called VSCodium and it’s a good alternative for those who want to continue using VSCode, while not having their privacy violated.
However, violating your privacy isn’t the only thing Microsoft is doing with VSCode. They are also trying to make it ubiquitous and turn it into the only code editor there is.
Because of this, it’s probably hard for you to even think of other open source code editors. They bought GitHub, and shut down theirs.
As a proponent of the open source movement, and of the open web, I don’t think it’s right for my code editor to become a monopoly either.
So I looked for a new code editor. I’m on Linux and I use GNOME, so I tried GNOME Builder. It’s not the best, but it does everything I need it to do, and it’s not made by a monopolistic company.
If you don’t use Linux, or don’t want to switch to another code editor, by all means, you should continue to use what works for you. But for me personally, I’m glad I made the switch, and I’m never looking back.