Please end the chaos

[Sajid01]

While many welcome the availability of SAS EG for connecting to SAS Viya 4 as they see it as a continuity from the past (and carry the historical baggage along with), the availability of multiple interfaces to connect to SAS Viya 4 (SAS EG, SAS Studio, VS Code ) is  chaotic and an avoidable irritant for admins. 

In my experience VS Code has proved it's mettle .

When it works for   Java, C#, go, python and, C++,   Oracle etc.,  it can work for SAS too as efficiently.
It is my humble suggestion that SAS promote VS Code as the official Code editor for SAS/CAS programming and deprecate SAS Studio and SAS EG over a reasonable period of time.
This would simplify managing the environment (and make business sense to SAS too!). SAS would only need to focus on extensions.

[Quentin]

This is a reasonable idea, and agree the range of IDE's does cause some confusion.  For a while it seemed like the future was Studio, and EG was going to be deprecated.  But then VS Code extension popped up, and EG is back having active development (e.g. it will be an interface to SAS Viya Workbench before Studio is).

I'm curious as an admin, do you think VS Code extension is sufficient now where you could decide to stop deploying EG and Studio within a business? Or would SAS users revolt over missing functionality?

I've played with the VS Code extension, both as a connection to PC SAS and a connection to Workbench, and I've been impressed.  While I haven't switched from EG (or Display Manager : )  I like the idea of VS Code being the future primary IDE, and putting most of SAS's IDE development effort into it, rather than Studio or EG.  Personally I'd be fine with EG being 'functionally stable' like Display Manager. 

[Quentin]

Second comment- just to get more eyes on this, you might want to edit the subject to "Please end the IDE Chaos" or similar, just to give people a clue as to the topic of the suggestion.

[Sajid01]

Thank @Quentin for the support.
There will always be a resistance to change (Newtons First Law -Inertia). Change   will take time.
But with a single IDE all development can be focused on only on that IDE and if that IDE is VS Code, the effort can be only be on developing the extension. The others can co-exist as they are.
Support/Admin can focus on that one IDE.

[Kurt_Bremser]

My issue with VS: it's from Microsoft, and you never can be sure they don't deprecate it next Thursday.

I would be much more comfortable with something that's GPL'd.

[ballardw]

I second @Kurt_Bremser's concerns. DDE anyone?

If you rely on someone else's tools to implement your project you are at the mercy of that third party.

I'm not particularly keen on the whole browser approach for the same reason. How many posts are there on this site about "quit working" when a browser was upgraded? I remember seeing them frequently with the previous SAS learning edition. Or use browser X because Y doesn't work for that.