A video titled The Story of VS Code | Official Documentary has been posted to YouTube. It explores the entire history of the development of VSC. That history goes back much further than you might expect.

VSC was released to the public in 2016. but the origin story goes back at least to 2010. Those earliest years are perhaps the most interesting in terms of history and make for extremely interesting watching. The contributions of many are highlighted, most notably Erich Gamma.

I began using VSC in 2020, when the use of Expression Web 4 became untenable. In earlier articles here, I explain my transition from EW4 through Rapid PHP and then to VSC with Intelephense. Despite missing some treasured EW4 features, it became clear that VSC was a superior development environment for my Web work.

I am now in a transitional phase in which most of my remaining Web work will be done using a dedicated PHP IDE, PhpStorm from JetBrains. That's because PhpStorm is the most powerful PHP on the planet; it will help me deal with some difficult development matters more effectively. However, a price increase is looming; VSC plus Intelephense remains a solid backup.

VSC will remain in my toolbox anyway because it has proven useful for several other purposes. I'm not alone; a 2025 Stack Overflow reported that 79% of 49,000 respondents used it.