Jumping into IDL for VSCode

Hey there! New to IDL for VSCode?

Check out our latest webinar recording to learn more and take your IDL programming to the next level.

Welcome! We are glad you could join us and are wanting to learn more about IDL for VSCode.

If you're like us (the developers of ENVI and IDL), and you have been working with IDL and the workbench/command line for a long time, Visual Studio Code represents quite a different user experience (albeit a good one!).

A lot of what we have created is driven by widely used languages like TypeScript with millions of users and rich tooling.

With the extension, there are a few key areas that we have improved the IDL Developer user experience:

• IDL Notebooks for interactive, and intuitive, ways to create code and share concepts

• Embedded documentation from the latest version of ENVI and IDL to make it easier to program

• Integrated hover help that pulls from the docs and directly from your code

• Type-based and syntax-aware auto-complete (it's also automated!)

• Automation to keep the presentation of your code crisp, consistent, and looking like our goal for the future of IDL

Licensing

First and foremost, this extension is free, and does not require a license of IDL or ENVI in order to run.

The only time an IDL license is required is when you start a session of IDL or run a cell in an IDL Notebook.

Everything else, including writing code, hover help, and auto complete, works without even having IDL installed on your machine.

This is the intended design to make it easier for people to write and interact with IDL code without the need to have our software to get some work done.