[zelly]

I have barely used Visual Studio, so maybe you're right. I did use it a few times for C++, and the version of it from circa 2006 is what I learned with. Visual Studio is very good, especially the debugger, but honestly VS Code with the C++ language server is good enough (80%, Pareto equivalent). Emacs with clangd is also decent while being lightweight.

What does an IDE do? VS Code can refactor, rename symbols, run a graphical debugger, parse a semantic outline of code, do version control with the mouse. A pure editor is like vi/ex/notepad.exe. VS Code is definitely closer to IDE than it is to an editor on that continuum.

Obviously for .NET, it's another story. Hands down the best way to make Windows desktop applications. You can build entire worlds without ever leaving the IDE. Thanks to Unity and Xbox, you can even do professional game dev with it.

Personally, for me it doesn't matter how good Visual Studio is or becomes because it'll take too long for me to learn Windows. I'm (happily) vendor locked in to the GNU ecosystem.