Visual Studio Code

I loved Atom. I really did. But, for all that I am a copyeditor and proofreader, I can’t catch my own errors for the life of me. And, no amount of fiddling behind the scenes could get Atom’s spell check to work on my Mac. It worked on the crashy Linux box, but not on my Mac. “Activites” was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Before the proverbial camel was incapacitated, friends on Facebook had recommended Visual Studio Code after seeing my Atom fangirl crush post. I balked, not because they weren’t professionals who knew much better than I, but because Atom was prettier and more intuitive to me. I had downloaded VS Code to check it out, and I could see that it was richer in features and targeted to a more serious user. I wanted to stick with Atom, which looked friendlier and was, after all, Octocat endorsed. But, I can typo better than most and VS Code has an awesome spell check, and straw + camel = hello to Visual Studio Code.

As you can see, I managed to clone my GitHub repository to VS Code without damage or unwanted head movement. I have even added new pages since the transition, all with content carefully and easily spell-checked. I don’t like that I can’t see both the Explorer and Source Control at the same time (as far as I know) like I could in Atom, but that combination of views seems unnecessary.

Why did Atom fail me? I don’t know. Maybe I failed Atom. Maybe my Mac failed us both. In any case, I’ll be using VS Code now, as I conquer HTML, master CSS, and shake hands with JavaScript. So long, astro-Octocat! It was nice meeting you.

• 2022 10