VS Code
Microsoft's free cross-platform code editor, the most widely used IDE for general-purpose development.
Definition
Visual Studio Code is Microsoft's open-source editor built on Electron. It ships with no language support out of the box; users install extensions from the marketplace for Python, TypeScript, Rust, Docker, and almost every language and toolchain. Most AI coding tools, including Claude Code and Cursor, integrate with VS Code as their primary host.
When to use
See also
- IDE — An editor bundled with project tooling — file tree, terminal, debugger, language server — for writing software.
- Cursor — An AI-first code editor forked from VS Code that integrates LLM completions, chat, and agent loops natively.
- Claude Code — Anthropic's official terminal-based coding agent, with MCP support and a plugin ecosystem.