VS Code / JetBrains IDEs
The code editors and integrated development environments where software engineers write, read, debug, and review code every working day.
What it is
About VS Code / JetBrains IDEs
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a free, open-source code editor from Microsoft that has become the most widely used development environment globally, with over 70% market share among professional developers. Its power comes from an extension ecosystem of over 50,000 plugins — language support, linters, formatters, Git integration, debuggers, Docker and Kubernetes management, and AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot) — combined with a lightweight, fast interface that handles everything from shell scripts to large TypeScript codebases. VS Code's integrated terminal, source control panel, and debugger mean most development workflows never leave the editor. JetBrains IDEs — IntelliJ IDEA (Java/Kotlin), PyCharm (Python), WebStorm (JavaScript/TypeScript), GoLand (Go), Rider (.NET), DataGrip (databases) — are the professional alternative for teams that value deep language intelligence over lightweight flexibility. JetBrains IDEs provide more sophisticated refactoring tools, deeper code analysis, and stronger framework-specific support than VS Code for their target languages. Many enterprise Java and Python teams use JetBrains exclusively. Both VS Code and JetBrains integrate with Git, Docker, and cloud provider toolkits, and both support AI coding assistants that suggest completions, generate functions, and explain existing code inline.
What you can do with it
Capabilities
Open a Python file, place a breakpoint on a suspicious line, launch the VS Code debugger, step through execution, and inspect variable values at each step to identify where a calculation produces an unexpected result
Use VS Code's multi-cursor editing to rename a variable across 40 occurrences in a file simultaneously — without a find-and-replace that might catch unintended matches in comments or strings
Install the ESLint and Prettier extensions, configure them to match the team's style rules, and set VS Code to auto-format on save — so every file committed follows the same formatting standard without manual intervention
Use IntelliJ IDEA's "Extract Method" refactoring to pull a 50-line nested block into a named method, let the IDE update all call sites automatically, and confirm the tests still pass
Open VS Code's integrated source control panel, review the diff for the files you've changed, stage individual lines (not whole files) from a mixed set of changes, and commit with a message that describes only what is in that commit
How to learn it
Learning Resources
VS Code's official Getting Started walkthrough — launch VS Code and open the Welcome tab; the interactive editor playground teaches the essential keyboard shortcuts in 20 minutes
VS Code's keyboard shortcut reference card (downloadable from code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/keybindings) — learning 10 core shortcuts (Command Palette, Go to File, Find in Files, multi-cursor) provides 80% of the productivity gain
JetBrains Academy (academy.jetbrains.com) — free IDE Feature Trainer built into every JetBrains IDE; launch it from Help > IDE Features Trainer to practise refactoring tools interactively
"VS Code Can Do That?!" by Burke Holland (free at vscodecandothat.com) — a reference of non-obvious VS Code features that most developers don't discover on their own
Pro Tip
Learn the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P in VS Code; Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + A in JetBrains). It is the entry point to every feature in the editor, including ones buried three levels deep in menus. Typing the first few letters of any action — "format document", "open settings", "toggle terminal" — is faster than navigating menus and eliminates the need to memorise specific key bindings for rarely used actions.
Skills that use this tool
Roles that use this tool
Alternatives