Does Nano and GCC still work ok?
Only if you are desperate or masochistic.
I would never use nano because vim is right there
It looks like the extension is licensed under MIT https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-cpptools You can “simply” fork it and provide builds yourself, right?
Not the case. There are binary components.
It doesn’t matter though because the Clangd & CodeLLDB extensions completely replace it and are actually waaaaaaay better.
With Microsoft’s C++ extension it always rinsed the CPU - there were files I had to avoid opening because then it would analyse them and I’d have to kill it. The code intelligence also seemed very “heuristic” and was quite slow.
Clangd fixes all of that. It’s fast, doesn’t choke on huge files, and if you have
compile_commands.jsonit’s actually the first properly fast and robust C++ IDE I’ve ever used. You know if you’ve used a Java IDE the code intelligence just works and is fast and reliable. It’s like that.
Oh, Microsoft is pulling the rug under your feet?
That’s fuckin’ news right there!
Does Theia have C/C++ extensions?
Good example why you don’t want to use and rely on proprietary software (the extension is not 100% open source as I understand), if there are free (as in source code and license) alternatives.
A professor once told me “don’t trust ‘free software’ from a megacorp”, most important thing I learned in college.
Technically this shit isn’t even free (libre); atleast with corpo projects we can always fork them
Maybe it’s just me, but I never got that thing to work right anyway - with VSC. It keeps running amok and using up all the CPU time doing stuff it should not be doing, trying to analyze every single file in my VM every single time it is started.
So… good riddance.
Not sure about the c/c++ support, but zed has greatly improved and it’s looking like a real long term alternative at this point
Good opportunity for Jetbrains to jump in. Maybe if they MIT licensed their community-edition tools.
Jetbrains have gone the opposite direction unfortunately. The latest version of PyCharm came with the announcement that PyCharm Community is being discontinued. Instead, they will provide just one PyCharm (the closed source one) formerly PyCharm Professional, that can operated in a Basic (Free) mode, or a Pro (Licenced) mode. Also, some features that were free in Community edition will be moved to the Pro mode in the new PyCharm.
It doesn’t affect me personally because my workplace pays for a pro subscription for me, but I used PyCharm Community for 4 years during uni and I’m sad it’s going.
Just came across another option. For those getting blocked by MSFT: https://theia-ide.org/
Not sure if you read this blog post: https://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/2025/04/unified-pycharm/
Rest assured – our commitment to open-source development remains as strong as ever. The Community Edition codebase will stay public on GitHub, and we’ll continue to maintain and update it. We’ll also provide an easy way to build PyCharm from source via GitHub Actions.
PyCharm is - like all JetBrains IDEs - based on intellij-community and the “Pro” stuff just some fancy pre-installed plugin that requires a license.
Alternatively, you may choose to manually switch to the new PyCharm immediately and keep using everything you have now for free, plus the support for Jupyter notebooks.
So all community functionallities will also be available in the unified edition for free.
Also the Pro license - which you can also get 4 free in like 10 different ways - pricing is extremely fair: A license costs $100-60 for an individual, which is cheaper than most streaming subscriptions…
University students get free pro licenses for jetbrains IDEs I think
Yes you’re right, they do. But 10 years ago when I was studying, my university (in Australia) was not on their list of valid academic institutions.
I still have access to my uni email address, and earlier this year I found indeed I could use it to get access to a free Jetbrains student licence.
Wow, that’s so sad. I loved Pycharm.
Maybe we need a new movement (or revisit past ideas from the 70s) that focuses on ensuring the openness regarding freedoms of computing (😉) that combat proprietary SaaS offerings? idk.
This is why OSS as an org needs a change IMO. Licenses like SSPLv1, where software can be supplied for free with options that allow a company to make money without risk of a cloud vendor snapping up their software (think Redis, MongoDB, etc) need a place at the table.
Licenses like SSPLv1
The SSPL requires that all software used to deploy SSPL software is open sourced. If I deploy my software on Windows, do I have to provide the source code for Windows? What about the proprietary hardware drivers, or Intel Management Engine?
The SSPL is not the next generation of licenses, it is effectively unusable. And both Redis and Mongo, dual licensed their software as the SSPL, and a proprietary license — effectively making their entire software proprietary.
make money without risk of a cloud vendor snapping up their software (think Redis, MongoDB, etc) need a place at the table.
Except Redis, and Mongo were making money. They had well valued, well earning SAAS offerings — it’s just that the offerings integrated into existing cloud vendors would be more popular (because vendor lock in). They just wanted more money, and were hoping that by going proprietary, they could force customers away from the cloud offers to themselves, and massively increase their revenue… They did not get that.
Another thing is that it’s not “stealing” Mongo/Redis’ when cloud vendors offer SAAS’s of Mongo/Redis. Mongo/Redis, and their SAAS offerings, are only possible because the same cloud vendors put more money than Mongo/Redis make yearly into Linux and other software that powers the SAAS offerings of Mongo/Redis, like Kubernetes. Without that software, Mongo/Redis wouldn’t have a SAAS offering at all.
I definitely think that it’s bad when a piece of software doesn’t get any funding it needs to develop, especially when it powers much more modern software, like XZ. But Mongo/Redis weren’t suffering from a lack of funding at all. They’re just mad they had to share their toys, and tried to take them away. But it didn’t even matter in the end.
They pulled the same thing with their widely used office format: base capabilities are standardised but most useful stuff is proprietary extension.
More and more engineers wok with cursor.
Here we go!!! I was expecting the enshitification of this thing for past couple of years
You are late. They have already did the same with C# extension, and made it closed source too.
I’m not up-to-date: what did they do to the C# extension? I’ve been using it on a personal project and haven’t experienced anything egregiously terrible (yet)
A lot of the C# ecosystem is open source (thank goodness), but the official debugger isn’t, hence it only being available in the proprietary version of VSCode.
They did it with python about 2 years ago.
It was explicitly said to not use this outside of VSCode, so, I’m not sure where the surprise comes from.
An AI company not respecting copyright and licensing? I’m shocked.
holy shit! the thing I’ve been warning developers who promote and use this shitty tool has finally happened.
shockedpikachu.jpeg
if you write fossy software, don’t use products made by fossy enemies.
I think a lot of people would really benefit from learning neovim
Or Helix, it has a less steeper curve
