Developer trust in tools and a reliable ecosystem are a hard combination to beat.

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VS Code maintains 76% market share among professional developers in 2025, even as AI-first editors like Cursor and Google's Antigravity emerge. Microsoft's dominance stems from ecosystem lock-in, with many new tools forking VS Code's codebase rather than replacing it. GitHub Copilot reached 20 million users, benefiting from distribution through existing workflows. However, trust issues emerged in 2025 around forced AI adoption, API deprecations, and security vulnerabilities. Google's Antigravity shows promise but faces skepticism due to Google's history of discontinuing products. The competitive advantage lies not in features but in providing stable, integrated developer experiences that enterprises can rely on long-term.

Why ‘boring’ VS Code keeps winning

Its an editor with advanced features, anything it misses is just added on via the vast extension community. Don’t like AI? Just remove the copilot extension. Still doesn’t meet expectations? Make your extension! Its easier than you think with their standard UI components.
And for complete newbs, they don’t need to be taught git via the command line when there is a GUI for that. Git blame for what comes after is a great accountability tool. I don’t think other editors come close with how well they integrate and bundle useful things together.

because it’s free and it’s to the point?

For me, trust collapsed the moment Visual Studio Code became the “Copilot-integrated editor.” I’ve been using VSCodium since last year, and it’s comfortable. However, since I started using AI tools, I might need to consider switching to a simpler editor.

Boring VSCode keeps winning for the same reason Windows does: people are lazy, developers double so.

The feature that made migrate to VS Code from Sublime was the native remote connection, which I still find almost magical up to this day. But I ultimately stick to it because of the huge community behind it. One obtains support so much more easily. It’s the same reason why I still have Ubuntu as my go-to Linux distro. As VS Code, it’s bloated compared to its alternatives, but it’s backed by a huge community. Community creates community.