Ansible vs Visual Studio Code

Overview

Ansible

Stacks19.5K

Followers15.6K

Votes1.3K

GitHub Stars66.9K

Forks24.1K

Visual Studio Code

Stacks186.5K

Followers169.1K

Votes2.3K

GitHub Stars178.2K

Forks35.9K

Ansible vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Introduction: Here are the key differences between Ansible and Visual Studio Code for web development.

Automation Tool vs. Code Editor: Ansible is primarily an automation tool used for configuration management and deployment tasks, while Visual Studio Code is a code editor that is used for writing, editing, and debugging code. Ansible is focused on streamlining processes and workflows through automation scripts, whereas Visual Studio Code is more geared towards enhancing the coding experience with features like syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, and debugging tools.
Scripting Language vs. Multiple Programming languages Support: Ansible uses YAML-based scripts for defining tasks and playbooks, making it easier for both developers and system administrators to write automation scripts. In contrast, Visual Studio Code supports a wide range of programming languages and includes extensions for different frameworks and tools, making it a versatile choice for developers working on various projects requiring different languages.
Remote Execution Capabilities: Ansible allows for remote execution of tasks on multiple servers simultaneously, making it efficient for managing large-scale infrastructure. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, does not have built-in remote execution capabilities and is more focused on providing a seamless coding experience on the local machine.
Collaboration and Teamwork: Ansible playbooks and roles can be stored in version control systems like Git, enabling collaboration among team members and ensuring version control for configuration changes. Visual Studio Code also supports integration with Git and other version control systems, but its primary focus is on individual code editing and development rather than infrastructure management and collaboration.
Community and Ecosystem: Ansible has a vibrant community that contributes playbooks, roles, and modules to enhance its functionality and support various technologies and platforms. Visual Studio Code also has a strong community that develops extensions and plugins to extend its capabilities, catering to a wide range of programming languages and development workflows.
Learning Curve and Ease of Use: Ansible may have a steeper learning curve due to its YAML syntax and concepts like playbooks and roles, which might require some time for beginners to grasp. Visual Studio Code, with its intuitive interface and user-friendly features, is generally easier to use for developers of all levels, providing a smoother onboarding experience for new users.

In Summary, Ansible excels in automation and infrastructure management, while Visual Studio Code is tailored for seamless coding and development experiences.

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Advice on Ansible, Visual Studio Code

Kamaleshwar

Software Engineer at Dibiz Pte. Ltd.

Jul 8, 2020

Decided

Visual Studio Code became famous over the past 3+ years I believe. The clean UI, easy to use UX and the plethora of integrations made it a very easy decision for us. Our gripe with Sublime was probably only the UX side. VSCode has not failed us till now, and still is able to support our development env without any significant effort.

Goland being paid, as well as built only for Go seemed like a significant limitation to not consider it.

1.36M views1.36M

Comments

Anonymous

Sep 17, 2019

Needs advice

I'm just getting started using Vagrant to help automate setting up local VMs to set up a Kubernetes cluster (development and experimentation only). (Yes, I do know about minikube)

I'm looking for a tool to help install software packages, setup users, etc..., on these VMs. I'm also fairly new to Ansible, Chef, and Puppet. What's a good one to start with to learn? I might decide to try all 3 at some point for my own curiosity.

The most important factors for me are simplicity, ease of use, shortest learning curve.

329k views329k

Comments

Simon

Student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Jan 9, 2020

Decided

I decided to choose VSCode over Sublime text for my Systems Programming class in C. What I love about VSCode is its awesome ability to add extensions. Intellisense is a beautiful debugger, and Remote SSH allows me to login and make real-time changes in VSCode to files on my university server. This is an awesome alternative to going back and forth on pushing/pulling code and logging into servers in the terminal. Great choice for anyone interested in C programming!

1.29M views1.29M

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Ansible	Visual Studio Code
Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates. Ansible’s goals are foremost those of simplicity and maximum ease of use.	Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
Ansible's natural automation language allows sysadmins, developers, and IT managers to complete automation projects in hours, not weeks.;Ansible uses SSH by default instead of requiring agents everywhere. Avoid extra open ports, improve security, eliminate "managing the management", and reclaim CPU cycles.;Ansible automates app deployment, configuration management, workflow orchestration, and even cloud provisioning all from one system.	Combines UI of a modern editor with code assistance and navigation; Integrated debugging experience
Statistics
GitHub Stars 66.9K	GitHub Stars 178.2K
GitHub Forks 24.1K	GitHub Forks 35.9K
Stacks 19.5K	Stacks 186.5K
Followers 15.6K	Followers 169.1K
Votes 1.3K	Votes 2.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros 284 Agentless 210 Great configuration 199 Simple 176 Powerful 155 Easy to learn Cons 8 Dangerous 5 Hard to install 3 Bloated 3 Doesn't Run on Windows 3 Backward compatibility	Pros 341 Powerful multilanguage IDE 310 Fast 194 Front-end develop out of the box 158 Support TypeScript IntelliSense 142 Very basic but free Cons 46 Slow startup 29 Resource hog at times 20 Poor refactoring 14 Poor UI Designer 11 Weak Ui design tools
Integrations
Nexmo Stackdriver VMware vSphere Docker OpenStack Amazon EC2 Rackspace Cloud Servers Google Compute Engine New Relic PagerDuty	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Ansible, Visual Studio Code?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Atom

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Chef

Chef enables you to manage and scale cloud infrastructure with no downtime or interruptions. Freely move applications and configurations from one cloud to another. Chef is integrated with all major cloud providers including Amazon EC2, VMWare, IBM Smartcloud, Rackspace, OpenStack, Windows Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute Engine, Joyent Cloud and others.

Terraform

With Terraform, you describe your complete infrastructure as code, even as it spans multiple service providers. Your servers may come from AWS, your DNS may come from CloudFlare, and your database may come from Heroku. Terraform will build all these resources across all these providers in parallel.

Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.

Capistrano

Capistrano is a remote server automation tool. It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows.

Puppet Labs

Puppet is an automated administrative engine for your Linux, Unix, and Windows systems and performs administrative tasks (such as adding users, installing packages, and updating server configurations) based on a centralized specification.

Brackets

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

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Ansible vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Introduction: Here are the key differences between Ansible and Visual Studio Code for web development.

Automation Tool vs. Code Editor: Ansible is primarily an automation tool used for configuration management and deployment tasks, while Visual Studio Code is a code editor that is used for writing, editing, and debugging code. Ansible is focused on streamlining processes and workflows through automation scripts, whereas Visual Studio Code is more geared towards enhancing the coding experience with features like syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, and debugging tools.
Scripting Language vs. Multiple Programming languages Support: Ansible uses YAML-based scripts for defining tasks and playbooks, making it easier for both developers and system administrators to write automation scripts. In contrast, Visual Studio Code supports a wide range of programming languages and includes extensions for different frameworks and tools, making it a versatile choice for developers working on various projects requiring different languages.
Remote Execution Capabilities: Ansible allows for remote execution of tasks on multiple servers simultaneously, making it efficient for managing large-scale infrastructure. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, does not have built-in remote execution capabilities and is more focused on providing a seamless coding experience on the local machine.
Collaboration and Teamwork: Ansible playbooks and roles can be stored in version control systems like Git, enabling collaboration among team members and ensuring version control for configuration changes. Visual Studio Code also supports integration with Git and other version control systems, but its primary focus is on individual code editing and development rather than infrastructure management and collaboration.
Community and Ecosystem: Ansible has a vibrant community that contributes playbooks, roles, and modules to enhance its functionality and support various technologies and platforms. Visual Studio Code also has a strong community that develops extensions and plugins to extend its capabilities, catering to a wide range of programming languages and development workflows.
Learning Curve and Ease of Use: Ansible may have a steeper learning curve due to its YAML syntax and concepts like playbooks and roles, which might require some time for beginners to grasp. Visual Studio Code, with its intuitive interface and user-friendly features, is generally easier to use for developers of all levels, providing a smoother onboarding experience for new users.

In Summary, Ansible excels in automation and infrastructure management, while Visual Studio Code is tailored for seamless coding and development experiences.