For most of us, Visual Studio Code is a text editor, a place to write code, preview Markdown, or maybe debug a script or two. But that perception barely scratches the surface. Over the last few years, VS Code has quietly evolved from being a popular code editor into something far bigger — an open source platform for building, extending, and even hosting entire development environments. Microsoft may still guide the core project, but the open source community and partner ecosystems have helped make VS Code a key part of the modern software landscape.
An open foundation anyone can build on
Even though Microsoft still has the front seat
At its core, VS Code is built on an open source project called Code OSS, published under the permissive MIT license. Microsoft maintains this repository publicly on GitHub, where anyone can clone, inspect, and contribute to it. The company’s official VS Code releases, the ones you download from Microsoft’s website, include some extra bits like branding, telemetry, and a proprietary license. But the underlying engine is completely open and community-driven.
This distinction is important because it means that the real VS Code experience doesn’t belong to Microsoft alone. Anyone can take the open-source OSS base, modify it, and build their own version. That’s exactly what projects like VSCodium have done, offering telemetry-free builds of the same editor that developers already love. The result is an ecosystem where the same open engine powers a variety of tools, from cloud IDEs to embedded environments.
The open foundation also enables large-scale collaboration. Microsoft actively accepts pull requests and issues from the community and maintains a clear code of conduct for contributors. Many improvements, from small bug fixes to feature ideas, come from developers outside the company.
It’s not just about openness in theory either. The fact that Code OSS is public means organizations like the Eclipse Foundation can build upon it transparently. Tools such as Eclipse Che and Eclipse Theia reuse VS Code’s core components, including the Monaco editor, and can run nearly all VS Code extensions. Theia, for instance, powers Gitpod and Google Cloud Shell, cloud IDEs that look and behave almost identically to VS Code.
Extensions turn VS Code into a powerhouse
There's an extension for everything
The features that Visual Studio Code includes out of the box are just the beginning. Extensions let you add languages, debuggers, and tools to fit your development workflow. VS Code's extensibility model lets developers integrate directly into the editor's interface and contribute new functionality through the same APIs that power its core features.
The Extension API is powerful enough to enable entirely new capabilities, from languages, debuggers, and themes to code completion engines and custom interfaces. This has created a massive library of extensions over time, similar to the Chrome Web Store. While no official count exists, estimates suggest over 20,000 are available. Some of the most popular ones, such as Python, Live Server, and Prettier, have tens of millions of installs each.
Extensions go far beyond small productivity tweaks. VS Code's Remote Development extensions allow it to connect to environments far beyond your desktop. Developers can open folders over SSH, inside Docker containers, or within Windows Subsystem for Linux, all while maintaining a consistent editor experience. The Dev Containers extension, now with over 30 million installs, lets teams define a full development environment in a single file so that anyone can spin one up in seconds.
This remote architecture forms the backbone of GitHub Codespaces, a cloud-based service that uses VS Code's APIs to provide ready-to-code environments directly in the browser. Whether you're editing locally or in the cloud, the same extensions, settings, and features simply work.
Beyond Microsoft, others have embraced this platform approach. Because the official VS Code Marketplace restricts publishing to Microsoft's ecosystem, the Eclipse Foundation launched Open VSX, a vendor-neutral registry for VS Code extensions. It hosts community-built extensions that projects like Theia and Gitpod rely on. Open VSX keeps the plugin ecosystem decentralized and accessible, ensuring that developers and organizations can continue using VS Code-compatible tools even outside Microsoft's control.
VS Code works in so many ways
As VS Code’s capabilities expanded, its reach grew far beyond traditional programming. Today, it’s used across education, data science, documentation, and cloud operations, all built on the same core platform but applied in entirely different ways.
VS Code has become the tool of choice for many Python and machine learning practitioners. It can open Jupyter Notebooks directly, run code cells inline, and visualize variables and outputs interactively. You can even pair it with AI tools like NotebookLM to make learning to code easier, or use self-hosted tools like massCode to store and manage code snippets more efficiently.
Even technical writers and documentation teams have embraced it. VS Code supports Markdown, YAML, and Asciidoc out of the box, along with extensions for linting, spell checking, and previewing content. Our resident technical editor, Adam Conway, even used it as an Obsidian replacement, and wasn’t nearly as disappointed as he expected to be.