Vscode is an IDE. It integrates all your development into one environment. It comes with support for version control, code editing, task running, and debugging all from one application.

Microsoft is smart not to call it an IDE. As that would drive hipsters away.

From the FAQ:

Visual Studio Code is a streamlined code editor with support for development operations like debugging, task running and version control. It aims to provide just the tools a developer needs for a quick code-build-debug cycle and leaves more complex workflows to fuller featured IDEs.

So, even Microsoft doesn't think it's a full blown IDE. With enough plug-ins it certainly could be.

That last sentence strikes a chord. Most IDEs are basically heavy-weight plug-in platforms (especially Eclipse and IntelliJ), built with the intent of being heavyweight IDEs. The currently popular editors - ST, Atom, VS Code - and the console-based editors that are still popular - Vim, Emacs, etc - approach it from the other side, putting text editing (including search etc) first, then adding plugins on top of that.

Or maybe put differently, IDE's are enterprise software, editors are agile startups?

An IDE is so much more. For instance, refactoring features. Even Microsoft defines VSCode as a "code editor" and not an IDE.

Think of "code editor" and "IDE" as two endpoints on a continuum. VsCode is less of an IDE than Visual Studio or Eclipse, but more of an IDE than Atom.

It has has debugging and task running, after all. Sounds a lot like an IDE.

Exactly, it never ceases to amaze me how often people arbitrarily categorize stuff as is/isn't

Have you even used VSCode?

It has refactoring, and revision control integrated. You can compile and run code, you can set breakpoints and step through execution. That's waaaaay more than just an editor.

As someone who started on FoxBASE, Turbo BASIC and Turbo Pascal (all for DOS), it's amusing to read comments like these. We certainly called these things IDEs, and the sole reason was that you could build your program directly in them, and the debug it, breakpoints and all.

I wonder what someone coming from an earlier era would have to say on that...

VSCode does have basic refactoring features.

I don't think refactoring was even a term when the first IDE's came out.

If there's some sort of editor-IDE spectrum, VSCode likely lives closer to the IDE side than editor.

Possibly? VSCode stands for Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/) right?

I've just seen most comments referring to it as an IDE.