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VS Code VS Kivy

Compare VS Code VS Kivy and see what are their differences

VS Code logo VS Code

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

Kivy logo Kivy

Open source Python framework for rapid development of applications that make use of innovative user interfaces, such as multi-touch apps. Installation on WindowsInstallation on Windows. Installation; What are wheels .
  • VS Code Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-10-09
  • Kivy Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-15

VS Code features and specs

  • Cross-platform
    VS Code works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, providing a consistent development experience across different operating systems.
  • Extensibility
    A vast library of extensions allows users to add functionalities like debuggers, linters, and themes, making it highly customizable.
  • Integrated Git
    Built-in Git integration makes it easy to manage version control tasks directly within the editor.
  • Performance
    Lightweight compared to full-fledged IDEs, ensuring good performance even on systems with limited resources.
  • IntelliSense
    Advanced code completion and refactoring tools help improve coding efficiency and reduce errors.
  • Community Support
    A strong and active community provides extensive support, tutorials, and third-party extensions.
  • Debugging
    Robust debugging tools for various languages and frameworks are available out of the box.
  • Free and Open-Source
    VS Code is completely free to use and open-source, which is beneficial for both individual developers and organizations.

Possible disadvantages of VS Code

  • Limited IDE Features
    While extensible, it may lack some advanced features found in dedicated IDEs out of the box.
  • Extension Management
    Managing and configuring a large number of extensions can become cumbersome and sometimes lead to performance issues.
  • Learning Curve
    Although user-friendly, it has a steeper learning curve for beginners due to its numerous features and customization options.
  • Memory Usage
    Despite being lightweight, it can consume a significant amount of memory when multiple extensions are installed.
  • Update Frequency
    Frequent updates may sometimes introduce bugs or require users to adapt to new changes quickly.
  • Internet Dependency
    Some features and extensions may require an internet connection to function optimally.
  • Telemetry
    By default, VS Code collects usage data, which might be a concern for users sensitive about data privacy. However, this can be disabled.

Kivy features and specs

  • Cross-Platform
    Kivy allows you to write your application code once and run it on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android, reducing development time and effort.
  • Open Source
    Kivy is an open-source framework, which means it is free to use and has a community-driven development model. This also allows developers to contribute to its improvement.
  • Rich User Interface
    Kivy provides a wide range of widgets and controls that can be customized to create highly interactive and attractive user interfaces.
  • Touch Support
    Kivy is designed with built-in support for multitouch events, making it a good choice for applications that require touch interactions.
  • Dynamic and Fast
    Thanks to its use of Cython, Kivy applications can achieve high performance and responsiveness.
  • Consistent Look and Feel
    Kivy apps maintain a consistent look and feel across all supported platforms, which can lead to a better user experience.

Possible disadvantages of Kivy

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Kivy can be challenging for beginners due to its custom language (Kv) and lack of extensive documentation.
  • Limited Community Support
    Compared to more established frameworks, Kivy has a smaller user community, which can make finding help and resources more difficult.
  • Lagging behind in Platform Integration
    Kivy may not offer the same level of integration with native platform features (such as navigation and notifications) as other frameworks like React Native or Flutter.
  • Debugging Complexity
    Debugging Kivy applications can be complex, especially when dealing with cross-platform issues, as the error messages are not always straightforward.
  • Performance Issues on Some Platforms
    Performance may not be consistent across all platforms, particularly on iOS devices where Kivy apps might suffer from performance degradation.
  • Limited Third-Party Libraries
    The ecosystem of third-party libraries and plugins is not as extensive as those available for other popular frameworks, which might limit functionality.

Analysis of VS Code

Overall verdict

  • Yes, VS Code is generally considered a good choice for developers due to its flexibility, efficiency, and strong community support. It is lightweight, fast, and user-friendly, catering to both novice and experienced developers.

Why this product is good

  • VS Code, developed by Microsoft, is a widely popular and versatile code editor. It offers a robust extension ecosystem, which allows developers to customize their workflow and coding environment extensively. Additionally, VS Code supports numerous programming languages right out of the box and provides features like IntelliSense, debugging, Git integration, and a built-in terminal, making it a powerful tool for developers.

Recommended for

  • Web developers looking for a comprehensive yet lightweight coding environment.
  • Software developers who need an editor with extensive language support and customization options.
  • Beginner programmers who would benefit from a feature-rich editor that can grow with their skills.
  • Developers interested in an open-source tool with continuous updates and community-driven enhancements.

VS Code videos

My New Favorite Text Editor - Visual Studio Code

More videos:

  • Review - 7 reasons why I switched to Visual Studio Code from Sublime Text

Kivy videos

Kivy Intro - Mobile and Desktop App Dev w/ Python

More videos:

  • Review - Starting on a GUI: WXpython vs Kivy #MP55

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to VS Code and Kivy)
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0
Game Development
0 0%
100% 100
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
94 94%
6% 6

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare VS Code and Kivy

VS Code Reviews

  1. dksinden
    ยท Working at SpeechKit ยท

Boost Your Productivity with These Top Text Editors and IDEs
Visual Studio Code, commonly known as VS Code, is a powerful and extensible code editor developed by Microsoft. With its rich ecosystem of extensions and features like IntelliSense, debugging, and Git integration, VS Code enhances your coding productivity.
Source: convesio.com
13 Best Text Editors to Speed up Your Workflow
Finally, the Visual Studio Code website has numerous tabs for you to learn about the software. The documentation page walks you through steps like the setup and working with different languages. Youโ€™re also able to check out some tips and tricks and learn all of the Visual Studio Code keyboard shortcuts. Along with a blog, updates page, extensions library and API...
Source: kinsta.com
Jupyter Notebook & 10 Alternatives: Data Notebook Review [2023]
Previously, VS Code was more suited to developers or engineers due to its lack of data analysis capabilities, but since 2020, the VS Code team has collaborated with the Jupyter team to create an integrated notebook within VS Code. The end result is a fantastic IDE workbook for data analysis.
Source: lakefs.io
The Best IDEs for Java Development: A Comparative Analysis
Overview: Although not a traditional IDE, VS Code has gained popularity as a lightweight code editor.
Source: dev.to
20 Best Diff Tools to Compare File Contents on Linux
Visual studio code is a code editor made by Microsoft. It supports several development operations like debugging, task running, and version control. It works on Linux, macOS and Windows operating systems.
Source: linuxopsys.com

Kivy Reviews

25 Python Frameworks to Master
Unlike PyQt, Kivy is free and open-source, isnโ€™t a wrapper around an external UI library, and is licensed under the MIT license, which means you can ship and monetize your Kivy apps.
Source: kinsta.com
Which Python GUI library should you use? Comparing the Python GUI libraries available in 2023
The look and feel of Kivy is extremely customizable, allowing it to be used as an alternative to libraries like Pygame (for making games with Python). The developers have also released a number of separate libraries for Kivy. Some provide Kivy with better integration and access to certain platform-specific features, or help package your application for distribution on...
10 Best Python Libraries for GUI
Kivy was written with a mix of Python and Cython, and it helps build some of the most intuitive user interfaces with multi-touch applications. These multi-touch applications help implement Natural User Interface (NUI), which is a type of interface where the user naturally learns about the various interactions while theyโ€™re usually invisible.
Source: www.unite.ai
Top 6 Python Framework for Game Development | by Ankur Kumar | unikaksha | Medium
Kivy is a Python game development framework for businesses. Itโ€™s an open-source Python library that lets programmers easily construct apps with unique user interfaces, such as multi-touch apps. Kivy assists in developing apps for Windows, Linux, and iOS devices such as iPhones, iPads, and Android devices such as phones and tablets.
Source: medium.com
Top 10 Python GUI Frameworks for Developers
With Kivy, interface designers can code once and deploy to multiple platforms, while the built-in support for OpenGL ES 2 allows them to use modern and powerful graphics and design techniques. The most common use of the Kivy GUI framework in the real-world can be seen in our Android and iOS applications. Other widespread implementations of the framework can be seen in the...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, VS Code seems to be a lot more popular than Kivy. While we know about 1214 links to VS Code, we've tracked only 48 mentions of Kivy. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

VS Code mentions (1214)

  • How to Get Your First Tool Online
    The step up from there is an editor with a built-in agent like Cursor, Google Antigravity, Windsurf, or VS Code with a coding extension. These are code editors with an AI agent living inside them, and the difference is the responsible party for getting things from place to place. Instead of the software creator shuttling code between windows, the AI agent edits the project files directly and runs the GitHub and... - Source: dev.to / 8 days ago
  • Agentic Engineering: What Does AI Coding Really Cost?
    For IDE-heavy teams, BYOK (bring your own key) can be interesting, no matter whether you live in WebStorm or VS Code. On the JetBrains side, the JetBrains AI plans and Junie BYOK docs allow it, and most VS Code AI extensions offer the same idea: keep the IDE, connect provider keys, pay the provider. - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • Best Markdown Editors for Developers
    Option 1: Raw editing in IDE. You open the .md file in VS Code or whatever you use. Syntax highlighting shows you the structure. Maybe you toggle a preview pane. This works for quick edits but becomes painful for anything involving tables, diagrams, or complex formatting. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Document Generation for Developers: Security, Compliance, and Build-vs-Buy Decisions for the Template-Plus-Data Pipeline
    You'll need Python 3.8+ and pip for the quickstart, with venv recommended for isolation. Install the requests library for HTTP calls. VS Code with the Python extension works well as an editor, though PyCharm or Sublime Text work equally well. You'll also need a free Foxit developer account. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Notes + Local AI: Simpler Than You Think
    For viewing and navigating, Obsidian handles large markdown libraries well: graph view, tag search, template plugins. VSCode works too if you'd rather stay in your dev environment. Both read the same folder with no conversion needed. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
View more

Kivy mentions (48)

  • Ask HN: What Toolchains Are People Using for Desktop App Development in 2025?
    Because I mainly work with python, I am using Kivy (https://kivy.org/). Earlier I was HTMX, Jinja templates, Flask, Tailwind and little vanilla JS. It was too inelegant for my taste. I am considering moving to either Swift, or JS/Svelete. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Plain โ€“ a web framework for building products with Python
    There are some things available, and people are working on it. Coincidentally, one of those people is Russell Keith-Magee of Django fame, who founded the BeeWare project. https://beeware.org/ https://beeware.org/about/team/freakboy3742/ https://kivy.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • How to Develop a User Data Storage Registration Form Using Python.
    We will create this complete Python registration form using Kivy. We get started by installing Kivy, a powerful Python framework for building interactive applications. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Can I create a mobile and Web App using Python/Python Framework?
    For reference, YouTube runs on Python[1,2,3]: > 1. Python and Django: YouTubeโ€™s backend is predominantly written in Python, offering a balance of performance and readability. > 2. Google Cloud Platform... > 3. Java and C++: YouTube also utilizes Java and C++ for specific backend services, as they provide better performance for certain tasks. --- A long time ago, I looked into these Python frameworks: -... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Python GUI libraries? <3
    I suggest you use kivy which is suitable for the desktop but also has the advantage of being one of few options for creating Python based native(ish) mobile apps (for IoS and Android app stores). Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing VS Code and Kivy, you can also consider the following products

Sublime Text - Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.

Blender - Blender is the open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation.

Vim - Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing

Unreal Engine - Unreal Engine 4 is a suite of integrated tools for game developers to design and build games, simulations, and visualizations.

Node.js - Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications

Unity - The multiplatform game creation tools for everyone.