Benefits of using VS Code Easy debugging support for PHP, Ruby, Node and many more Easy to maintain the code and can add more than one project folder to the workspace. Many extensions help in the development. You can add your own code snippets, rather coding the same logic (like emmet) Can do pair programming and can share the servers. Remote code debugging is easy Extensions I use : Bracket Pair Colorizer VS Live Share(pair programming/debugging) TODO Highlight Live Server DotENV(Environment variables for node applications) Note: There are many extensions available, which might suit your development enviroment.