In-Depth Review
VS Code is a rare example—a free product that became the industry leader and pulled far ahead of second place. Sublime Text still gets updates, JetBrains has its loyal user base, but if you walk into any tech company office in 2026, 9 out of 10 programmer screens are running VS Code.
Its core competitiveness isn't "most features" but "install only what you need." VS Code itself is very lightweight — an Electron shell + basic editor. What makes it heavier, and also stronger, is the plugin marketplace. Over 50,000 extensions, from language support for Python, Go, and Rust, to Docker, Kubernetes, database management, to Prettier formatting, Copilot AI completion—everyone can assemble a development environment completely tailored to themselves.
Remote development capability is VS Code's underrated killer feature. Through the Remote-SSH plugin, you can edit code on a remote Linux server from a Windows laptop, with an experience nearly indistinguishable from local. WSL 2 integration lets Windows developers seamlessly use the Linux toolchain. Dev Containers lets you package your entire development environment into Docker—a new hire runs one command and the environment is fully set up. These capabilities may not matter to individual developers, but for engineering teams of dozens or hundreds, they are essential.
But VS Code isn't perfect. The Electron architecture means it's essentially a Chrome browser — with 20 plugins loaded, 2GB+ memory usage is par for the course. If you're on an older machine with 8GB RAM, running VS Code + Chrome + Docker simultaneously, you'll feel the pressure. Additionally, after too much configuration, settings.json becomes a pile of JSON blocks nobody can read—VS Code's "flexibility" turns into "chaos" in extreme cases.
Overall, VS Code is the default starting point for all programmers. If you're just learning to code, just install VS Code �?no need to overthink it. If you're already experienced but using another editor, unless you absolutely need JetBrains' refactoring features, you'll likely wonder "why didn't I switch sooner."
Pros
- Free and open source
- Enormous extension marketplace
- Performance continuously improving
Cons
- Electron memory footprint
- Excessive configuration can get messy
- Default Git integration occasionally unintuitive