Because VSCode is superior to Roblox Studio’s editor. VSCode is an IDE, it’s made to write code, unlike Roblox Studio, which is a game engine, it’s primary focus isn’t writing code, it has other things for building, Ui, animating, etc. etc. It’s like UI designers that use Photoshop then import to Studio, why don’t they just stick to Studio? Photoshop is better!
Using Rojo allows you to use version control, like github, which makes it very easy to switch code back without switching the whole game, say, you made an asset that took a whole day, but deleted a script by mistake in the process, you can save the asset, then change game version (and reload the whole game!) then load the asset again from the saved file, or just
git reset --HARD <hash>
With Rojo. Simpler, isn’t it?
Rojo also allows using of programs on your computer, like wally. I personally have made a couple of handy CLI tools that help me which I wouldn’t have been able to do with Roblox Studio.
I think that’s enough reasons? No?
Well, VSCode allows you to use extensions to make your code less error-prone, things like linters, like selene, which I personally don’t use, but it’s still a reason to use VSCode.
This point isn’t very Rojo-specific, but more of a reason to use VSCode.
Away from all of that: offline! Sometimes I want to test performance between 2 pieces of code which aren’t always Roblox-specific but more Luau-specific, usually the online website is good enough, but when doing large tests (especially with a lot of memory usage and/or looping - which increases test accuracy), it just can’t hold! So I use the luau.exe
file with code that I wrote in VSCode, it would take me way longer to open Studio, wait, then open a game, THEN start writing code, where in VSCode, I can just run it on my machine, which also excludes factors from Roblox Studio’s performance!