I don't know what Notepad you use to write your code, but VSCode with font ligatures (for comparison operators) and a linter (aligns the same as elastic tabstops) already does the 80% of what you want. The 20% rest – sidebar for documentation – are not implemented for a reason.
The 20% rest – sidebar for documentation – are not implemented for a reason.
The sidebar to show the documentation is just a presentation detail. What I’d really like as a developer is (a) the ability to attach documentation with a specific scope ranging from small things like a function parameter or variable, though larger things like a function or a set of related functions, up to whole files or packages, and then (b) editors that recognise the scoped documentation and present it contextually.
I’d like all relevant comments to be easily visible when I might want to refer to them. Also, I’d like to know what documentation exists in the first place, which is not always obvious when we rely on things like big banner comments at the top of files/sections or having separate README files scattered through the tree.
> The 20% rest – sidebar for documentation – are not implemented for a reason.
I mean, keeping an overview of the documentation open on the side is something I do every day in GNU Emacs, so I'm a bit curious what the reason is why it's not done in Microsoft VS Code.
You can do it in VSCode. It's running in a browser. There may extensions to do that or if not you could write one easily.
The reason it doesn't come with the editor is because every language has its own specific documentation format, though I do wish that they could create a consistent set of keyboard shortcuts, search UI, etc for documentation.
I don't know what Notepad you use to write your code, but VSCode with font ligatures (for comparison operators) and a linter (aligns the same as elastic tabstops) already does the 80% of what you want. The 20% rest – sidebar for documentation – are not implemented for a reason.