I'd say it occupies a middle point between full IDE and text editor.
If I want the best IDE, its something from JetBrains. It's definitely the slowest to open up, about 9 seconds on my machine, and I wouldn't think of opening a multi GB json file in it, but past that initial open its just as fast as sublime (again on my machine).
If I want the fastest text wrangler or dealing with a massive file, its Sublime. Having used all 3, VSCode just leaves me wishing I opened one of the others.
The best thing about VScode is that it is a really good (just not the best) IDE that is also free
I've tried VSCode a few times through the years, but it always seemed like I needed at least a dozen plugins to get all the features I have out-of-the-box with PhpStorm. I guess it's a philosophical difference between modular components and a big ol' monolith (though, beneath the hood, IntelliJ IS modular... most of their software is just a branded collection of plugins, though all the major ones are first-party instead of community-driven like in VSCode).
A nice feature is you can disable/enable plugins per workspace so you can only load your Java plugins for your java projects, etc.
edit: My only gripe with VSCode currently is that it seems too eager to correct my typing.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetlia...
Actually uses a real backend neovim instance. Can’t get better vim support than that! I find it a god-send when working in VSCode as the Vim key map alternative was slow, buggy, didn’t have full support.
Now I don’t have to compromise.
"editor.acceptSuggestionOnEnter": "off",
"editor.quickSuggestions": {
"comments": false,
"other": false,
"strings": false
},
"editor.wordBasedSuggestions": false,
"extensions.ignoreRecommendations": true,*files of sizes I work work. I don't care about gigabyte-sized files; if I do, vim or my existing ST3 license are good enough.