VSCodium

Overview

VSCodium is the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) I use it for code. If you code you know, but if you don't code you should give it a try. And if you do code you probably already have a preferred IDE so I'm not sure you would care what I have to say. In any case, VSCodium is free and even if you just use it for editing markdown and yaml it's got a huge ecosystem of extensions to help with that. If you're new to coding it's a bit intimidating but if you approach it slowly, piece by piece, eventually you'll have an enormously powerful tool that can make your life (and the lives of others) much easier.

Why not regular VSCode? Because it's got less bloat, fewer analytics feeding the Microsoft beast. That's about it

Review

What I use it for: Coding. This site, all the widgets and apps on it, it all passed through VSCodium at some point. It's also great for managing large sets of data in text, whether that's doing data clean up on catalogs of Traits and Feats or million line files of names for a random name generator. It's not my sole text editor, I switch between Obsidian, Notepad++, and VSCode regularly and each has a set of features that can make things so much easier once you learn to use them,

Pros:

• Excellent performance. It's my go-to when other tools struggle with very large text files
• Clean, configurable interface; Structure panels in a way that makes sense to you, use themes to dress it up however you like.
• Extremely configurable and extendible. Huge extension library and lots of documentation.
• Functionally identical to VSCode without the Microsoft bloat
• It's not 'AI First' by default so you get to decide if and how to integrate that

Cons:

• If you're new to coding all the UI and configuration can be a bit overwhelming
• It doesn't have some of the fancier newer patterns seen in the latest IDEs (could be a pro depending on your viewpoint)

Try if:

• Do work with text in any way and you need something more powerful than Notepad++
• If you're starting out as a developer and looking for a good workhorse IDE.
• You use VSCode but want something with a bit more privacy