Visual Studio Code is a developer-focused source-code editor from Microsoft that blends a fast, keyboard-driven editing experience with powerful productivity features. It provides syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion (IntelliSense), code navigation (go-to-definition, find references), multi-root workspaces, an integrated terminal, and a built-in debugger for many languages. VS Code is designed to be lightweight out of the box while allowing users to add functionality through a large marketplace of extensions for language support, linters, formatters, themes, and tools.

A core strength of VS Code is its extensibility and rich extension API: extensions can add language servers, debuggers, UI components, custom editors, and integrations with external services (CI, container tooling, cloud providers, and AI assistants). The editor also supports remote development workflows (remote SSH, containers, WSL) and web-based variants (vscode.dev) so developers can work with code in diverse environments. Recent additions emphasize AI-assisted workflows (integrations with Copilot, chat/agent features, and model integrations) and agent-like automation to refactor code, run tests, and apply multi-file edits.

Use cases span individual developers writing and debugging code, teams collaborating via Git and pull-request extensions, educators demonstrating code, and organizations building custom developer tooling with private extensions. The audience includes hobbyists, professional software engineers, DevOps and SRE engineers, data scientists who use language-specific extensions, and tool authors who build editor integrations. VS Code’s combination of performance, extensibility, cross-platform support, and a broad extension ecosystem makes it suitable for nearly any coding workflow.