Brackets vs Visual Studio Code

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Brackets

450
752
+ 1
202
Visual Studio Code

179.5K
163.7K
+ 1
2.3K
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Brackets vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Brackets and Visual Studio Code are two popular code editors commonly used by developers. While both editors provide similar features and functionalities, there are several key differences that set them apart.

  1. Extension Ecosystem: Visual Studio Code has a much larger and more diverse extension ecosystem compared to Brackets. This means that developers using Visual Studio Code have access to a wider range of extensions and plugins to enhance their coding experience and productivity. Brackets, on the other hand, has a more limited selection of extensions available.

  2. Integrated Terminal: Visual Studio Code comes with an integrated terminal, allowing developers to run commands and scripts directly within the editor. This eliminates the need to switch between the editor and a separate terminal window. In Brackets, an integrated terminal is not available, and developers have to use an external terminal for running commands.

  3. Debugging Capabilities: Visual Studio Code offers powerful debugging capabilities, supporting multiple programming languages and providing features like breakpoints, variable inspection, and step-by-step execution. Brackets, on the other hand, has limited debugging capabilities and lacks some advanced debugging features.

  4. Git Integration: Visual Studio Code provides seamless integration with Git, allowing developers to perform Git operations like commit, pull, push, and branch management within the editor. Brackets, on the other hand, lacks built-in Git integration and requires the use of external tools or extensions for Git operations.

  5. Live Server: Brackets comes with a built-in live server feature that allows developers to quickly launch a local development server and preview their web pages in real-time. Visual Studio Code does not have a built-in live server feature, but it can be achieved by using extensions.

  6. Code Navigation: Visual Studio Code offers advanced code navigation features such as the ability to quickly jump to definitions, find references, and navigate through code using breadcrumbs. Brackets, on the other hand, has limited code navigation capabilities and lacks some of these advanced features.

In summary, Visual Studio Code offers a larger extension ecosystem, integrated terminal, advanced debugging capabilities, Git integration, and better code navigation compared to Brackets, while Brackets has a built-in live server feature.

Decisions about Brackets and Visual Studio Code
Samriddhi Sinha
Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling · | 6 upvotes · 1M views

Lightweight and versatile. Huge library of extensions that enable you to integrate a host of services to your development environment. VS Code's biggest strength is its library of extensions which enables it to directly compete with every single major IDE for almost all major programming languages.

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Kamaleshwar BN
Senior Software Engineer at Pulley · | 12 upvotes · 1.3M views

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.

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Simon Ibssa
Student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo · | 2 upvotes · 1.2M views

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!

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Pros of Brackets
Pros of Visual Studio Code
  • 51
    Beautiful UI
  • 40
    Lightweight
  • 25
    Extremely customizable
  • 20
    Free plugins
  • 14
    Live Preview
  • 13
    Free themes
  • 8
    Clean
  • 7
    Easy
  • 6
    Integration with photoshop
  • 4
    Perfect for web development
  • 4
    Simple
  • 4
    Fast
  • 2
    Awesome UI
  • 2
    Clean UI
  • 2
    Code suggestions
  • 340
    Powerful multilanguage IDE
  • 308
    Fast
  • 193
    Front-end develop out of the box
  • 158
    Support TypeScript IntelliSense
  • 142
    Very basic but free
  • 126
    Git integration
  • 106
    Intellisense
  • 78
    Faster than Atom
  • 53
    Better ui, easy plugins, and nice git integration
  • 45
    Great Refactoring Tools
  • 44
    Good Plugins
  • 42
    Terminal
  • 38
    Superb markdown support
  • 36
    Open Source
  • 35
    Extensions
  • 26
    Awesome UI
  • 26
    Large & up-to-date extension community
  • 24
    Powerful and fast
  • 22
    Portable
  • 18
    Best code editor
  • 18
    Best editor
  • 17
    Easy to get started with
  • 15
    Lots of extensions
  • 15
    Good for begginers
  • 15
    Crossplatform
  • 15
    Built on Electron
  • 14
    Extensions for everything
  • 14
    Open, cross-platform, fast, monthly updates
  • 14
    All Languages Support
  • 13
    Easy to use and learn
  • 12
    "fast, stable & easy to use"
  • 12
    Extensible
  • 11
    Ui design is great
  • 11
    Totally customizable
  • 11
    Git out of the box
  • 11
    Useful for begginer
  • 11
    Faster edit for slow computer
  • 10
    SSH support
  • 10
    Great community
  • 10
    Fast Startup
  • 9
    Works With Almost EveryThing You Need
  • 9
    Great language support
  • 9
    Powerful Debugger
  • 9
    It has terminal and there are lots of shortcuts in it
  • 8
    Can compile and run .py files
  • 8
    Python extension is fast
  • 7
    Features rich
  • 7
    Great document formater
  • 6
    He is not Michael
  • 6
    Extension Echosystem
  • 6
    She is not Rachel
  • 6
    Awesome multi cursor support
  • 5
    VSCode.pro Course makes it easy to learn
  • 5
    Language server client
  • 5
    SFTP Workspace
  • 5
    Very proffesional
  • 5
    Easy azure
  • 4
    Has better support and more extentions for debugging
  • 4
    Supports lots of operating systems
  • 4
    Excellent as git difftool and mergetool
  • 4
    Virtualenv integration
  • 3
    Better autocompletes than Atom
  • 3
    Has more than enough languages for any developer
  • 3
    'batteries included'
  • 3
    More tools to integrate with vs
  • 3
    Emmet preinstalled
  • 2
    VS Code Server: Browser version of VS Code
  • 2
    CMake support with autocomplete
  • 2
    Microsoft
  • 2
    Customizable
  • 2
    Light
  • 2
    Big extension marketplace
  • 2
    Fast and ruby is built right in
  • 1
    File:///C:/Users/ydemi/Downloads/yuksel_demirkaya_webpa

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Cons of Brackets
Cons of Visual Studio Code
  • 3
    Not good for backend developer
  • 1
    You have to edit json file to set your settings.
  • 1
    Bad node.js support
  • 46
    Slow startup
  • 29
    Resource hog at times
  • 20
    Poor refactoring
  • 13
    Poor UI Designer
  • 11
    Weak Ui design tools
  • 10
    Poor autocomplete
  • 8
    Super Slow
  • 8
    Huge cpu usage with few installed extension
  • 8
    Microsoft sends telemetry data
  • 7
    Poor in PHP
  • 6
    It's MicroSoft
  • 3
    Poor in Python
  • 3
    No Built in Browser Preview
  • 3
    No color Intergrator
  • 3
    Very basic for java development and buggy at times
  • 3
    No built in live Preview
  • 3
    Electron
  • 2
    Bad Plugin Architecture
  • 2
    Powered by Electron
  • 1
    Terminal does not identify path vars sometimes
  • 1
    Slow C++ Language Server

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What is Brackets?

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

What is Visual Studio Code?

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

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What companies use Brackets?
What companies use Visual Studio Code?
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What tools integrate with Brackets?
What tools integrate with Visual Studio Code?

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What are some alternatives to Brackets and Visual Studio Code?
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.
Git
Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
GitHub
GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.
Docker
The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere
npm
npm is the command-line interface to the npm ecosystem. It is battle-tested, surprisingly flexible, and used by hundreds of thousands of JavaScript developers every day.
See all alternatives