January 22, 2025

Do not ask me to use Visual Studio Code or Chrome

I have been asked a couple times to switch from Emacs to VS Code or from Firefox/Safari to Chrome. Here’s why I will never do it.

I’m a software developer by profession, and most developers have settled on a couple of essential tools: VS Code for writing code, and the Chrome browser.

Obviously I have no problem with this; people can use the tools they want to (though the trillion-dollar corporations developing these tools do not have their best interests at heart), but some people do not abide by this rule and have told me to stop using the tools I want to use.

They have their reasons which make sense to them, the foremost being that everyone else uses Chrome/VS Code, and so using it will make sure I do not face weird issues, and that people looking at my screen actually have some idea of what’s going on.

Here are some reasons why I won’t ever switch to these tools:

1. Chrome does not support a lot of useful extensions like uBlock origin (the Chrome store does list it but it is a hobbled version).
2. They are not open source, which means that you are never sure what code you are running on your computer, and if there is a bug there is not a good way to look into it. Chrome and VS Code are “based on” open source projects called Chromium and Code - OSS, but these projects omit important functionality such as extensions.
3. Chrome is effectively a monopoly, which causes web programmers to only test on Chrome to save on effort, making the web worse for everyone else (Safari, Firefox, Servo, etc.). If more people were to use these alternatives, it would stop the feedback loop of Chrome taking over the web because some sites just won’t work without it.
4. VS Code and Chrome both send back usage data to their respective trillion-dollar companies, which is a violation of my privacy.
5. I am quite happy using Emacs, and find it to be more featureful than VS Code. I can extend it easily using Emacs Lisp, and it is much smaller in size than VS Code (both in terms of size-on-disk and RAM usage), which means I can run it on any computer I want.
6. VS Code is chiefly a marketing tool for Microsoft, and it allows them to get mind-share amongst developers. They also promote their own tools and cloud service within it. Emacs, developed by volunteers, does not want to sell me anything.