Reasons to use a secondary IDE: code folding (by itself worth the justification), multiple cursors, familiar keyboard shortcuts, just a different "look"
These days, switching between IDEs is a bit like skins on a favorite media player (at least for me). For the same python or node code base, I will switch between working in VSCode and Notepad++, depending on what I am doing.
I have cobbled together a basic language pack for NPP, but it doesn't correctly handle single-line IF... THEN... statements, which messes up NPP's code folding. I intend to write another script that parses my current WBT files and converts all single-line IF---THENs into IF--ENDIF blocks. That should fix the code folding. Haven't done it yet.
Example:
This wrecks NPP code folding:
if bob > 10 then message("Hello", "Hi Bob")
This works with NPP code folding:
if bob > 10
message("Hello", "Hi Bob")
endif
VSCode's language extension API is frankly beyond me. (Not all golfers can wear the gold jacket.) When working on WinBatch code in NPP, I do what I can in NPP and then switch back into WBS for its amazing debugger. Then again, my core WBT scripts are too advanced for the F11 runtime debugger and I use debugTrace - in which case, I don't need to use WBStudio. I work in NPP, run the script, read the debugTrace file, and tweak s'more in NPP.
Would *love* to have a WIL language extension for VSCode ! At the moment, I spend 90% of my coding life there -- so would see great value in remaining within VSCode's very familiar environment to work on WBT scripts also. NOT as a replacement, but as a "skin". (It would take the load off the WinBatch programmers also: is it easier to create a VSCode extension, or to write code-folding/multi-cursors into WBS?)
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I've attached my (work-in-progress) NPP user-defined-lang file. It is incomplete, but has most of the keywords. Consider it a good start, not a fait-a-complis. And caveat emptor re the code folding.