We arrived at tenth title of the essential programs of the year. A completely personal list of the applications that I plan to use most actively in 2024.
As I explained in almost all the articles The goal of this selection is to make me more productive while reducing my dependence on proprietary software and services. Additionally, I want to keep my personal data as private as possible.
The essential programs of the year
Once again I reiterate the invitation for you to tell us what applications you plan to use this year.
The tenth application
Reducing dependence on proprietary software and guaranteeing privacy applies specifically to this particular case since This particular program is a fork of another program that sends data to the developers. We are talking about VSCodium.
For those who have never heard of this program, let's go with some preliminary explanations.
Integrated development environment
There is a very common joke that says that real Linux users program using a text editor without additional functions (Except Linus who programs in his head and connects it to the computer to transfer the code.) In reality, they prefer text editors with some functions editing add-ons like Vim or Nano. But, The rest of us prefer to use an integrated development environment.
An integrated development environment (IDE) It is a program that provides developers with all or almost all the tools necessary to write their code.
Some of those tools are:
- Code editor:It is where the programmer writes the program code. It usually comes with tools to make writing easier such as autocomplete, suggestions, syntax highlighting, and autoidemtation.
- Compiler:Translates written code into a language understandable by the computer.
- Interpreter:It transforms the code into language understandable by the computer at the time of execution.
- ScrubberIt allows you to correct code errors by executing each line step by step and monitoring the behavior of the variables.
- Version manager: Often connected to external services, it allows you to keep track of the changes made in the different versions of the programs.
- BuilderIt deals with tasks such as converting source code into executable applications by incorporating the necessary dependencies and libraries.
VS Codium
As part of the change in position towards open source (forced by circumstances) Microsoft decided win back programmers who had left their Visual Studio application for open source integrated development environments. So in 2015 he launched Visual Studio Code. VS Code was in fact the first of the company's applications with a Linux version.
One month after released the source code under the MIT license.
The MIT License Which allows you to read, modify and share the code It only applies to what is released by Microsoft which may decide to close it at any time. On the other hand, the application includes telemetry by default, although it can be deactivated.
Thanks to telemetry that almost no one bothers to disable, Microsoft collects information about the habits of developers working with the program, the errors that occur and the most used tools.
That is why VSCodium, an open source integrated development environment based on the source code released by Microsoft, was launched but with its own extensions. The compatibility of these extensions with those of VS Code depends on their creators deciding to release them for both programs since they use different APIs.
Given that VS Code is designed to integrate with Microsoft products and includes connection to GitHub or Azure services It also has more complete documentation.
However, since I am not a professional developer nor am I part of a work team, VSCodium is enough and more than enough to meet my code writing needs.. I also find that its use is quite intuitive and it has extensions that are useful enough for the most common programming languages.
Can be installed from stores Flatpak y Snap.