The Rise of VS Code: How a Web‑Based Editor Became the #1 IDE

VS Code is the top‑used IDE/editor according to the 2021 Stack Overflow survey (71% of developers), a success built on many critical decisions that offer valuable lessons for creating technical products.

2011 Story Begins – Monaco Editor

Leveraging experience from Eclipse, Erich Gamma quickly built a pure web editor named "Monaco," which became the foundation of VS Code and was initially offered to Azure users. Its performance outperformed Ace and CodeMirror, and the editor was designed without any UI framework to maximize speed and control.

2013: Full Switch to TypeScript

Faced with JavaScript’s quirks and runtime type issues, the team adopted TypeScript, which had been developed by Anders Hejlsberg. Monaco started using TypeScript in 2011, and by 2013 the entire codebase switched, providing strong type checking that greatly aided large‑scale development.

2013: A Year That Almost Failed

Despite technical excellence, the tool had only about 3,000 active users, far below the threshold needed to sustain the team, prompting a critical evaluation of its future direction.

2014: Opportunity Arrives

Microsoft’s shift to a cloud‑first, cross‑platform strategy created a need for a versatile development tool. Recognizing this, Erich decided to transition from a pure web editor to a desktop IDE, wrapping Monaco with Electron and rebranding it as "Visual Studio Code" to leverage the Visual Studio name.

2015: VS Code Launch

VS Code was officially announced at the BUILD conference, showcasing demos such as debugging .NET applications on Linux. While many features were initially demo‑only, the Extension API was released six months later.

2016: Multi‑language Support via LSP

The introduction of the Language Server Protocol (LSP) enabled support for additional languages, with Java being the first to integrate through LSP during a hackathon.

2017‑2019: VS Code Remote

The "Open in VS Code" feature evolved into VS Code Remote, allowing developers to run the editor locally while executing debugging and command‑line tasks on remote servers, facilitated by Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) for cross‑platform compatibility.

2020: Return to Web

Although the desktop version relied heavily on Node.js file APIs, a pure web version of VS Code was finally released in 2020, coinciding with a surge of online IDEs and low‑code tools built on its architecture.

Summary

Performance matters: speed and meticulous optimization are essential for tool products.

Anticipate future trends and adapt: recognizing the rise of web, cloud, and cross‑platform development was key.

Listen to users and iterate continuously: VS Code resolved over 100,000 issues in early 2021, reflecting deep user focus.

Luck favors the prepared: timing Microsoft’s shift and having TypeScript championed by Hejlsberg accelerated success.

Most of the content is derived from Erich Gamma’s presentations; the accompanying keynote video is recommended for further insight.