>IME a lot of developers don't like their IDE heavily coupled to backend servers and environments, but actually prefer the "code editor + useful features" appro

>IME a lot of developers don't like their IDE heavily coupled to backend servers and environments, but actually prefer the "code editor + useful features" approach Personally, I use VSCode for generic text editing, scripting, taking markdown notes, general purpose review/browsing repos (e.g., opening up a project to review a couple of python classes), etc. It's nice for switching between a variety of languages and use cases. I like the integrated terminal, the directory search feature (so much less clunky than the equivalent Mac Jetbrains IDEs' features), the multiselect text editing experience, the ease of configuration, and the general responsiveness. But if I need to do a deep dive on a language, I generally switch to a fully featured IDE. For example, if I need to refactor 10000 lines of C#, I'm definitely going to switch to Rider or VS with Resharper where the built-in refactoring, debugging, and static analysis tools are so much more powerful. So really I see them as different tools for different use cases. VS Code is nice for my fluffier, tech lead work, where I tend to bounce around between fifty disparate tasks in fifty different contexts. Rider, Pycharm, CLion, etc. are more useful for me when I have to fall back into doing deep dive technical work personally.