Personally I think VSCode is a pretty weak IDE in a lot of ways. Half of the suggestions are more like “guesses” without any real context-aware processing happening. It’s performance in automated refactoring or automatically detecting/fixing stuff like import errors is highly language dependent and poor quality for many (esp dynamic languages).

I’ve used many text editors and IDEs. Textmate 1 was the first I truly fell in love with, and over the years heavily used Textmate 2, Sublime, Atom, and VSCode. Spent a solid 6 months with SpaceMacs (look it up if you want to hurt your brain) but wasn’t for me.

I started using IntelliJ at work for a single feature (the diff tool) and eventually switched over entirely to Jetbrains. WebStorm is by far the best web programming IDE I’ve used (react support is insane, w/ 0 time spent configuring it). I’ve used a few others (Ryder, CLIon) but IntelliJ is the work horse that gets it done for me.

I sometimes go try out VSCode again or other IDEs. They’re fun and shiny for a day or two until the minor annoying issues pile up and the lack of depth in the features / code introspection becomes more obvious. Then back to IntelliJ.

I usually pirate most tools until they’ve demonstrated substantial value for me, and really hate subscriptions. But Jetbrains entire suite with the “returning customer” discount is like $150/year. And I got the discount on the entire suite because I had paid for Webstorm in the past, which seems really customer friendly. Really not trying to ride their dick or anything, I just feel like they really save me time and mental effort which is my most valuable resource these days.