[TriEmbed] Visual Studio Code question

Thu May 13 09:46:20 CDT 2021

Pete,

You nailed it. You either relent to Microsoft or choose another path. They twist and complicate in the most torturous ways. Unraveling what should be the most basic task seems monumental sometimes. The infinite support on the internet helps get through it, but it is what it is. It's productive when everything works right and you follow the prescribed methods, but dare you step out of line and you will be wishing for carpet bombs again. While I appreciate they moved to Open-Source I also recognize that they were forced into this path. Their imperialism failed but their desired Imperialist culture is alive and well. They just have to play nice now. Peace through force as the reason. 

I love IDEs when they just work, they drive me insane when I have to dig in and see what the hell they are doing with what seems like a simple issue. I think you NEED IDE's when you have certain Environments like complex Java coding and complex Microsoft anything it seems. Most Microsoft Developers I know are not ignorant of command line development, but would rather die than consider it an option. But they put the time into the Ecosystem where as I do not.

Same for Eclipse and other IDE's built around complex environments. My recent jump into VS Code was positive, but about two years ago when I first tested it, I hated it. They continue to improve though. The ESPxx programing went quite well, but not perfect. I struggled when I tried to load the ESP IDF in VS Code. It did not just work, in fact I abandoned it and went with IDF as a separate install and Arduino libraries for VS Code. Pluses and minuses for both and if I worked harder I probably could have got it to work, but instead I was dreaming of carpet bombs and that it was not worth my time. `,~)

I feel your pain on IDE's it's a Love\Hate relationship.

John Vaughters

On Thursday, May 13, 2021, 9:31:06 AM EDT, Pete Soper via TriEmbed <triembed at triembed.org> wrote: 

The following is not meant to be criticism of VS Code or Particle or 
Microsoft, just information about their tool chain in its current state 
and the corner cases I seem to be unlucky enough to flush out.

Poking around docs and I can't seem to find the answer to this 
question:  How to disable the VS Code editor and tell it I'm using an 
external editor? I realize VS Code is a code editor and this question 
may be another in a long  line of benchmarks for heresy.  I don't seem 
to be able to avoid heresy.

This feature is straight forward with the Arduino IDE and I'm hoping 
it's present in VS Code to help me escape from the hopeless confused 
state Code (or Particle Workbench?) gets into with mutated files. I'm 
seeing a state where it decides I shouldn't really be using vim and so I 
can't edit the source from inside Code or outside and have it reflected  
sanely in the next build. If I could just find the right button in 
files/prefs/settings/Text Editor or the right json entry or something. 
But my deeper issue is that even "clean" operations with Particle 
workbench don't keep Code from seeing the wrong source files in some 
cases. The fact that it doesn't see a clear dependency between .ino and 
generated .cpp file (i.e. mutating the former should force recreation of 
the latter. And how is it possible a clean doesn't remove the .cpp??? D 
U H) All this tells me I need Maxwell's silver hammer. So far I've tried 
particle clean local, manual deletion of the .cpp, reset intellisense 
database, and reset editor history. Some combination of these has 
rescued me but what I really need is a way to say "I'll handle the 
source mutations myself" so I can more easily edit a bunch of files at 
once and just use Code for the build and debug sessions for where I'm at 
with this stuff. Can you tell I still haven't adapted to graphical 
interfaces? But I will get my mind right with VS Code, I'm just in a 
hurry at the moment.

Also, if there is anybody on the list with experience using the Particle 
JTAG debugger with an Argon  using Particle Workbench I'd love to get 
some of your consulting time for a faster bootstrap and am happy to pay 
for it.

Thanks,
Pete

PS This is what it is: my opinion. I love VS Code and don't despise or 
hate Microsoft anymore. That started when the kid named Bill was kissing 
MITS' ass and moving down the street from them while gloating about his 
shitty BASIC implementation and then making his customers his unwitting 
alpha and beta testers for decades and duping and screwing this and that 
biz partner. I used to have visions of latter day incendiary barrel 
bombs dropping on Redmond after getting the campus evacuated to burn all 
the source code and stop the torture of Windows users. But their attempt 
to embrace and extend open source is going to enable any hidden 
imperialist plans  to find the same sort of fate as US biz _____ enjoyed 
with their attempt at a conquest of China. I wonder if Paul or somebody 
else wrote that BASIC? I don't know but don't really care that much. 
Yes, I am an ambulatory fossil, but one who knows something about system 
software and the difference between juvenile hobby code and commercial 
code that respects accumulated wisdom.

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