CLion vs Visual Studio Code

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CLion

354
563
+ 1
210
Visual Studio Code

152.9K
136.5K
+ 1
2.2K
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CLion vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

CLion: A cross-platform IDE for C and C++. Knowing your code through and through, CLion can take care of the routine while you focus on the important things. Boost your productivity with the keyboard-centric approach (Vim-emulation plugin is also available in plugin repository), full coding assistance, smart and relevant code completion, fast project navigation, intelligent intention actions, and reliable refactorings; Visual Studio Code: Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft. Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

CLion and Visual Studio Code are primarily classified as "Integrated Development Environment" and "Text Editor" tools respectively.

"Good editor" is the primary reason why developers consider CLion over the competitors, whereas "Powerful multilanguage IDE" was stated as the key factor in picking Visual Studio Code.

Visual Studio Code is an open source tool with 79.3K GitHub stars and 11.1K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Visual Studio Code's open source repository on GitHub.

Asana, Microsoft, and Intuit are some of the popular companies that use Visual Studio Code, whereas CLion is used by Codealike, Zscaler, and EXANTE. Visual Studio Code has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1134 company stacks & 2379 developers stacks; compared to CLion, which is listed in 9 company stacks and 8 developer stacks.

Decisions about CLion and Visual Studio Code
Samriddhi Sinha
Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling · | 6 upvotes · 860.5K 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 · 1.1M 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 · 1.1M 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 CLion
Pros of Visual Studio Code
  • 29
    Good editor
  • 28
    Easy setup
  • 22
    Already one of the best C/C++ IDEs, even before launch
  • 22
    Powerful refactoring, extremely smart IDE
  • 20
    Cross-platform build
  • 18
    Clean, Sleek User Interface
  • 17
    Much faster and smarter than Intellisense
  • 13
    Vertically/Horizontally split windows
  • 12
    Great navigation, error messages and auto completion
  • 9
    Vim plugin
  • 8
    Not a 20gb installation
  • 5
    It is best IDE
  • 3
    Like this one because of - not a 20GB installation
  • 2
    Free Flowing C++ IDE
  • 1
    Very good Git plugin
  • 1
    IDE supports Python with all features of PyCharm CE
  • 335
    Powerful multilanguage IDE
  • 302
    Fast
  • 190
    Front-end develop out of the box
  • 157
    Support TypeScript IntelliSense
  • 141
    Very basic but free
  • 124
    Git integration
  • 105
    Intellisense
  • 76
    Faster than Atom
  • 52
    Better ui, easy plugins, and nice git integration
  • 43
    Great Refactoring Tools
  • 42
    Good Plugins
  • 40
    Terminal
  • 37
    Superb markdown support
  • 35
    Open Source
  • 34
    Extensions
  • 26
    Awesome UI
  • 26
    Large & up-to-date extension community
  • 23
    Powerful and fast
  • 21
    Portable
  • 18
    Best code editor
  • 17
    Best editor
  • 16
    Easy to get started with
  • 15
    Crossplatform
  • 15
    Good for begginers
  • 14
    Extensions for everything
  • 14
    Open, cross-platform, fast, monthly updates
  • 14
    Lots of extensions
  • 14
    Built on Electron
  • 13
    All Languages Support
  • 12
    Easy to use and learn
  • 12
    "fast, stable & easy to use"
  • 12
    Extensible
  • 11
    Ui design is great
  • 11
    Git out of the box
  • 11
    Totally customizable
  • 11
    Faster edit for slow computer
  • 11
    Useful for begginer
  • 10
    Great community
  • 9
    SSH support
  • 9
    Great language support
  • 9
    It has terminal and there are lots of shortcuts in it
  • 9
    Powerful Debugger
  • 9
    Works With Almost EveryThing You Need
  • 9
    Fast Startup
  • 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
    She is not Rachel
  • 6
    Awesome multi cursor support
  • 5
    SFTP Workspace
  • 5
    Easy azure
  • 5
    VSCode.pro Course makes it easy to learn
  • 5
    Very proffesional
  • 5
    Language server client
  • 5
    Extension Echosystem
  • 4
    Has better support and more extentions for debugging
  • 4
    Virtualenv integration
  • 4
    Excellent as git difftool and mergetool
  • 3
    'batteries included'
  • 3
    More tools to integrate with vs
  • 3
    Better autocompletes than Atom
  • 3
    Emmet preinstalled
  • 3
    Supports lots of operating systems
  • 3
    Has more than enough languages for any developer
  • 2
    Fast and ruby is built right in
  • 2
    Microsoft
  • 2
    Light
  • 2
    Customizable
  • 2
    VS Code Server: Browser version of VS Code
  • 2
    CMake support with autocomplete
  • 1
    Good
  • 1
    Big extension marketplace

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Cons of CLion
Cons of Visual Studio Code
  • 2
    No good support for Makefiles
  • 2
    Not free, unless you are a student
  • 44
    Slow startup
  • 27
    Resource hog at times
  • 20
    Poor refactoring
  • 15
    Microsoft
  • 13
    Poor UI Designer
  • 11
    Weak Ui design tools
  • 10
    Poor autocomplete
  • 8
    Microsoft sends telemetry data
  • 7
    Poor in PHP
  • 7
    Huge cpu usage with few installed extension
  • 6
    Super Slow
  • 5
    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

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- No public GitHub repository available -

What is CLion?

Knowing your code through and through, CLion can take care of the routine while you focus on the important things. Boost your productivity with the keyboard-centric approach (Vim-emulation plugin is also available in plugin repository), full coding assistance, smart and relevant code completion, fast project navigation, intelligent intention actions, and reliable refactorings.

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.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

What companies use CLion?
What companies use Visual Studio Code?
See which teams inside your own company are using CLion or Visual Studio Code.
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What tools integrate with CLion?
What tools integrate with Visual Studio Code?

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What are some alternatives to CLion and Visual Studio Code?
Visual Studio
Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.
Eclipse
Standard Eclipse package suited for Java and plug-in development plus adding new plugins; already includes Git, Marketplace Client, source code and developer documentation. Click here to file a bug against Eclipse Platform.
NetBeans IDE
NetBeans IDE is FREE, open source, and has a worldwide community of users and developers.
ReSharper
It is a popular developer productivity extension for Microsoft Visual Studio. It automates most of what can be automated in your coding routines. It finds compiler errors, runtime errors, redundancies, and code smells right as you type, suggesting intelligent corrections for them.
AppCode
It is an integrated development environment for Swift, Objective-C, C, C++, and JavaScript development built on JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA platform. It takes care of your routine tasks and saves you from extra typing.
See all alternatives