CodePen vs Visual Studio Code

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CodePen

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224
+ 1
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Visual Studio Code

172.7K
157K
+ 1
2.3K
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CodePen vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between CodePen and Visual Studio Code, two popular tools used by developers for coding and development purposes.

  1. CodePen: Collaborative Online Code Editor for web development: CodePen is an online code editor and community for front-end developers to write and share HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code snippets. It provides an easy-to-use interface with built-in features like live preview, code sharing, collaboration, and integration with popular web development libraries and frameworks. CodePen is primarily designed for quickly prototyping and sharing web-related code snippets and projects.

  2. Visual Studio Code: Powerful Code Editor with Rich Features: Visual Studio Code, often referred to as VS Code, is a lightweight but powerful source code editor developed by Microsoft. It offers extensive features and functionality for various programming languages and frameworks. VS Code provides a customizable user interface, integrated terminal, debugging support, version control integration, and a wide range of extensions to enhance the editor's capabilities. It is designed for professional software development and offers a robust and comprehensive environment for coding, debugging, and collaboration.

  3. CodePen: Online-only Environment: CodePen is an online platform that runs entirely in the browser. Users can access and work on their code projects from any device with an internet connection using the CodePen website. It provides a convenient way to share code snippets with others and collaborate in real-time without requiring any local installation or setup. However, as an online-only environment, CodePen may have limitations in terms of performance, offline availability, and dependency on the stability of the internet connection.

  4. Visual Studio Code: Local Code Editor with Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Features: Visual Studio Code is a local code editor that needs to be installed on the user's system. It provides a fully-fledged integrated development environment (IDE) experience with advanced features like IntelliSense code completion, powerful debugging capabilities, built-in Git support, and extensive language support through extensions. Being a local editor, VS Code allows developers to work offline and gives them more control over their development environment.

  5. CodePen: Simplified Code Editing and Prototyping: CodePen focuses on simplicity and ease of use for web developers who want to quickly prototype and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. It provides a clean and minimalistic coding interface where developers can focus on writing code and previewing the output in real-time. CodePen's simplicity makes it a popular choice for beginners and those who prefer a straightforward environment for web development.

  6. Visual Studio Code: Extensibility and Customization: One of the standout features of Visual Studio Code is its extensibility and customization options. VS Code allows developers to install a wide range of extensions from the marketplace, enabling them to tailor the editor to their specific needs and preferences. These extensions can add support for additional programming languages, provide advanced debugging tools, integrate with cloud platforms and services, and enhance the overall development experience. With VS Code's extensibility, developers can create a personalized coding environment that suits their workflow and requirements.

In summary, while CodePen is primarily an online code editor focused on web development prototyping and collaboration, Visual Studio Code offers a comprehensive local coding environment with powerful features, extensibility, and customization options for professional software development.

Decisions about CodePen and Visual Studio Code
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 CodePen
Pros of Visual Studio Code
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 339
      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
    • 34
      Extensions
    • 26
      Large & up-to-date extension community
    • 26
      Awesome UI
    • 24
      Powerful and fast
    • 22
      Portable
    • 18
      Best editor
    • 18
      Best code editor
    • 17
      Easy to get started with
    • 15
      Lots of extensions
    • 15
      Built on Electron
    • 15
      Crossplatform
    • 15
      Good for begginers
    • 14
      Extensions for everything
    • 14
      Open, cross-platform, fast, monthly updates
    • 14
      All Languages Support
    • 13
      Easy to use and learn
    • 12
      Extensible
    • 12
      "fast, stable & easy to use"
    • 11
      Totally customizable
    • 11
      Git out of the box
    • 11
      Faster edit for slow computer
    • 11
      Ui design is great
    • 11
      Useful for begginer
    • 10
      Great community
    • 10
      SSH support
    • 10
      Fast Startup
    • 9
      It has terminal and there are lots of shortcuts in it
    • 9
      Powerful Debugger
    • 9
      Great language support
    • 9
      Works With Almost EveryThing You Need
    • 8
      Python extension is fast
    • 8
      Can compile and run .py files
    • 7
      Great document formater
    • 7
      Features rich
    • 6
      He is not Michael
    • 6
      Awesome multi cursor support
    • 6
      Extension Echosystem
    • 6
      She is not Rachel
    • 5
      Language server client
    • 5
      Easy azure
    • 5
      SFTP Workspace
    • 5
      VSCode.pro Course makes it easy to learn
    • 5
      Very proffesional
    • 4
      Supports lots of operating systems
    • 4
      Has better support and more extentions for debugging
    • 4
      Excellent as git difftool and mergetool
    • 4
      Virtualenv integration
    • 3
      Has more than enough languages for any developer
    • 3
      Better autocompletes than Atom
    • 3
      Emmet preinstalled
    • 3
      'batteries included'
    • 3
      More tools to integrate with vs
    • 2
      VS Code Server: Browser version of VS Code
    • 2
      Big extension marketplace
    • 2
      Customizable
    • 2
      Microsoft
    • 2
      Light
    • 2
      Fast and ruby is built right in
    • 2
      CMake support with autocomplete

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

    Cons of CodePen
    Cons of Visual Studio Code
    • 4
      No support for any other git-server than github
    • 46
      Slow startup
    • 29
      Resource hog at times
    • 20
      Poor refactoring
    • 16
      Microsoft
    • 13
      Poor UI Designer
    • 11
      Weak Ui design tools
    • 10
      Poor autocomplete
    • 8
      Super Slow
    • 8
      Microsoft sends telemetry data
    • 7
      Poor in PHP
    • 7
      Huge cpu usage with few installed extension
    • 6
      It's MicroSoft
    • 3
      No built in live Preview
    • 3
      No Built in Browser Preview
    • 3
      Poor in Python
    • 3
      Electron
    • 3
      No color Intergrator
    • 3
      Very basic for java development and buggy at times
    • 2
      Powered by Electron
    • 2
      Bad Plugin Architecture
    • 1
      Terminal does not identify path vars sometimes
    • 1
      Slow C++ Language Server

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is CodePen?

    It is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers.. It functions as an online code editor and open-source learning environment, where developers can create code snippets, creatively named "pens", and test them.

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

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    What are some alternatives to CodePen and Visual Studio Code?
    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.
    CodeSandbox
    CodeSandbox allows developers to simply go to a URL in their browser to start building. This not only makes it easier to get started, it also makes it easier to share. You can just share your created work by sharing the URL, others can then (without downloading) further develop on these sandboxes.
    Codeanywhere
    A development platform that enables you to not only edit your files from underlying services like FTP, GitHub, Dropbox and the like, but on top of that gives you the ability to collaborate, embed and share through Codeanywhere on any device.
    JSFiddle
    It is an online community for testing and showcasing user-created and collaborational HTML, CSS and JavaScript code snippets, known as 'fiddles'. It allows for simulated AJAX calls.
    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.
    See all alternatives