Vscode: Symbol icons could be so much more helpful

[matklad]

I've been using VS Code extensively for more than a year now, and I must say I still don't know the meaning of symbol icons:

IE, the only useful info that these icons convey me is that some symbols are of different kind.

In contrast, IntelliJ's much simpler icons have a very clear meaning, even if you haven't used IntelliJ a lot:

f is field, C is class, m is method, E is enum, etc...

I wish VS Code used such letter mnemonic scheme as well, it seems more useful for new and expert users alike.

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/symbols.html#
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/clion/icons-and-symbols.html#

[misolori]

These icons come from Visual Studio and we've had them from the beginning. I understand that some icons might not be useful/meaningful, but we are currently working on allowing extensions to provide their own custom icons to use throughout VS Code (see #92791) and I think this will help address this issue. Icons are subjective and what works for you might not work for others (and vice versa).

[matklad]

Subscribed to #92791, I believe it indeed can solve this issue in practice, thanks!

Still, I'd like to push back a little against

Icons are subjective and what works for you might not work for others

This is undoubtedly true, but I feel there's a meaningful fundamental difference between purely graphical icons, and mnemonics-based icons. And my gut feeling tells that significantly more people will intuitively understand mnemonics-based one. Which, naturally, doesn't mean that this benefit outweighs, eg, the benefits of not changing anything.

[misolori]

Which, naturally, doesn't mean that this benefit outweighs, eg, the benefits of not changing anything.

This will likely be the biggest hurdle to changing the default. A good majority of users switch between VS and VS Code and this continuity is highly appreciated. So if the default ever changed it would affect a large majority. That's not to say we'd never change it, last year we did a major icon overhaul that diverged from VS. But I honestly don't see us changing the default for symbol icons and is why we're open to allowing to change all the icons based on user preference.

@jrieken any thoughts?

[jrieken]

I understand both side - I can also not "understand" those icons but see that folks are used to them, likely for decades. Therefore I am also a little afraid to change the default, but we could ship an alternative, more logical, set out of the box and encourage users to try it. Personally, I have solved this problem like so: "editor.suggest.showIcons": false

[kjeremy]

The two concepts could always be combined. A small offset letter may be a nice complement to the current icon set.

[misolori]

I'll leave this up and see what the community thinks, will mark this as a backlog candidate.

[shba007]

Definitely it will help

[3ENITblu]

I'll make a poorly sourced estimate that most of the users that use VSCode never or at least not continuously used Visual Studio; it will be great to have a default set (the current ones) and a more mnemonic set of icons as alternative.

[vscode-triage-bot]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[vscode-triage-bot]

This feature request has not yet received the 20 community upvotes it takes to make to our backlog. 10 days to go. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[vscode-triage-bot]

:slightly_frowning_face: In the last 60 days, this feature request has received less than 20 community upvotes and we closed it. Still a big Thank You to you for taking the time to create this issue! To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!