Visual Studio Code

VS Code won the editor wars by being good enough at everything and excellent at extensibility. TypeScript, Rust, PHP, Python, Swift — every language has first-class support through extensions. The integrated terminal, Git UI, and debugger mean most developers never need to leave the window.

The AI integration sealed it. Copilot, Claude Code, and every other AI coding tool targets VS Code first. The extension API is the platform that third-party tooling builds against. IntelliJ still has stronger Java support and Xcode owns Apple development, but for everything else, VS Code is the default.