I'm kind of surprised you did a deploy from VS Code. I would have assumed there was another tool for that. I do most of my git and ssh/scp stuff from the command line because I'm never quite sure what the tool will try to do to "help me out"
For myself it's all about reducing the delay between "writing code" and "seeing the results". Dropping down to scp or run a script to deploy files seems like an unnecessary delay/break in my development process that I don't like adding in.
If you can develop 100% locally this isn't an issue but we can't (or haven't taken the time to do so). Think of the dev server as just a VM running locally and it might make more sense.
It all comes back to that "development cycle" and wanting to make that as short as possible. What you suggest is absolutely fine, it's just my personal preference (and something that I've seen help other devs) to make the "write code"->"see results" as tight as possible.
If you add any delays, any potential chance of forgetting a step, etc then it breaks my programming flow which can kill my productivity.
