Visual Studio Code

Microsoft’s open-source editor: a plain text editor that becomes an IDE through extensions.

What it does

VS Code is an Electron-based editor that sits between a plain text editor and a full IDE. Out of the box it gives syntax highlighting, fuzzy file navigation, integrated terminal, Git gutter and staging UI, and a debugger protocol (DAP) that language extensions plug into. What it is not is a full JetBrains IDE — the deep refactoring and static analysis those ship with come from extensions here, if at all.

Two remote features matter more than the editing. Dev containers put the whole environment inside Docker, so the toolchain is defined by the repository rather than by the machine. Remote - SSH runs the editor’s backend on another host and leaves only the UI local, which is how a laptop edits on a machine with far more compute — over Tailscale, from anywhere. The two combine: a dev container on the remote host works exactly as it does locally.

Most of its capability arrives through extensions rather than the core app — language servers for Go, Python, Swift or Hugo templates, linters, formatters, remote development over SSH, and dev container support that reuses the same .devcontainer/ definition Docker uses.

Why it is usually the first install

It is the lowest-commitment editor that scales: good enough to open a single file in, capable enough to stay in for a full project, and with an extension for practically every language and framework. Workspace settings, snippets and recommended extensions live in a .vscode/ directory inside the project, so a repository can carry its own editor configuration for anyone who clones it.

Configuration

Everything is a JSON file, at one of several scopes. User settings apply everywhere; workspace settings live in .vscode/settings.json inside the project and override them; a dev container adds its own on top. The same split applies to snippets — global ones sit in the user profile, project ones in .vscode/*.code-snippets, which is how a repository ships boilerplate to everyone who clones it.

Settings Sync carries settings, keybindings, snippets, themes and the extension list between machines through a GitHub or Microsoft account. It is off until turned on, from the gear menu.

Themes are extensions like any other and sync with the rest — One Dark Pro’s Monokai Darker variant is a reasonable place to start. Extensions can also be pinned per environment: devcontainer.json lists the ones its container installs, so a container is reproducible without touching the local profile.

Notes

The code command on PATH comes from the app itself — run Shell Command: Install ‘code’ command in PATH from the command palette after a fresh install.

Alternative to

Alternative	Type	Trade-off
Cursor and Windsurf	Freemium	VS Code forks built around AI editing
Zed	Freemium	Native, extremely fast, with collaboration built in
Sublime Text	Paid	Instant startup, a one-off licence, far fewer extensions
JetBrains IDEs	Paid	Deeper language intelligence, at the cost of weight and price
Neovim	Open source	The terminal answer, with LSP and tree-sitter
VSCodium	Open source	The same editor built without Microsoft’s telemetry and branding