Notre verdict
The advantage of VS Code is not what ships in the box but that whatever you need probably already has an extension. Remote development, containers and Jupyter all run in one window. The cost is slower startup with many extensions and fairly high memory use.
Points forts
- An extension ecosystem nobody has matched
- Mature remote, container and WSL development
- Completely free on all three platforms
Points faibles
- Electron architecture, high memory use
- Extension quality varies widely
- CPU spikes while indexing large projects
Requirements
macOS 12+ / Windows 10+ / major Linux distributions · 8 GB RAM
Install steps
- Download the installer for your platform (.dmg / .exe / .deb)
- Sign in with GitHub to sync settings and extensions
- Open the command palette with Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P to install a language pack
Changelog
v1.962026-10Rebuilt the settings UI, search about 40% faster
v1.952026-09Copilot inline completion uses multi-file context
v1.942026-08Fixed Wayland IME popup misplacement on Linux
