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#

[miguelsolorio]

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.

[miguelsolorio]

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.

[miguelsolorio]

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

[shba007]

Definitely it will help

[eternalblue]

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.