Wish: one VS Code editor AutoHotkey extension to rule them all

[neogna2]

The general purpose code editor VS Code has 11 million active users and is the most popular in Stack Overflow Developer Survey

This means that anyone who is a programmer and encounters AutoHotkey for the first time is likely to have VS Code installed already.

Unfortunately there is currently no definitive AutoHotkey extension for VS Code. Searching for extensions give confusing results where the most downloaded extension hasn't been updated in several years and 8 others have fewer downloads and partly overlapping features. That makes it hard to know which if any of them are reliable now and will keep getting updates months from now.

I wish the AutoHotkey community, or those in it who use VS Code, rallied around one extension to do it all (V1 V2 syntax highlight, debugging, ...) and concentrate work there.

vscode.png (63.3 KiB) Viewed 485 times

[boiler]

While I am in favor of supporting and bringing attention to the best AHK extensions for VS Code, I see having a number of extensions available as a good thing. If you search for extensions available for any popular language, you’ll find a much longer list than the AHK list. The ratings and number of downloads help guide you towards the the ones that have been found to be the most useful. You’ll also find discussions of the various extensions on this forum.

What do you suggest regarding your wish to have one extension “to rule them all”? Stating which is your favorite and generating discussion is a good thing. But isn’t having a choice and encouraging others to try to create new and potentially better and more complete extensions also a good thing? When you say “concentrate work from there,” the way further work typically happens is by someone forking one of the existing extensions to add new features (or building a new one from scratch). I suppose you could encourage the author of your favorite extension to incorporate features from others into their extension. Is that what you are advocating?

[neogna2]

Some languages do have very clear go to extensions. For example the Python one with 25 million installs. You can be pretty certain that changes in newer versions of Python will quickly be reflected there. Not so with a lot of the smaller extensions. They may have niche uses but aren't the first thing for someone getting started coding in Python.

Which AutoHotkey extension will for the coming 12 months be consistently quick in keeping up with changes in AutoHotkey V2? Impossible to answer, they're all too small for the stats and reviews to set them apart much and the update track record varies over time.

I suppose you could encourage the author of your favorite extension to incorporate features from others into their extension. Is that what you are advocating?

I wish the people currently making separate extensions merged their effort into one single extension project that is reliably kept up do date with changes in VS Code and AutoHotkey V1/V2. I have zero power over them of course, I'm just expressing what I hope for.