I hate the environment, that's why I use vscode. After a long day outside, rolling coal on my 6x6 and littering out in nature, I come home and relax by turning on vscode and let it idle as I throw old tires in the fireplace. If you hate the environment like I do, use vscode.

Because it's a well-made, useful, simple but extensible program? I really don't care if it's "a browser" (it's not, just part of one). And it being not just a tab in my existing browser lets it do critical IDE things like write files and open a terminal (and be easier to find and differentiate from my research, product management, and testing tabs).

IDE in general are not that good.

VSCode has a lot of of expansions, enabling a developer to stay in the same environment for any language they code in.

So if you have a multi-language setup, you can do everything in the same IDE.

I work with embedded firmware, and let me tell you that VSCode is miles ahead from manufacturer tools.

I personally don't use VSCode because microcontroller manufacturer tools usually come with a repeatable easy to install environment, so I can easily handoff the projects to my clients.

But if you ship code and don't have to ship the environment, VSCode is a good allrounder that can do pretty much anything.

With that said, use VSCodium instead. At least, it removes the analytics from the IDE.