I can't say I've noticed any "nudges" to use AI tools in VS Code. I saw a prompt for Copilot but I closed it, and it hasn't been back.
I'm probably barely scratching the surface of what I can do with it, but as a code editor it works well and it's the first time I've ever actually found code completion that seems to work well with the way I think. There aren't any formatters for a couple of the languages I use on a daily basis but that's a Me Problem - the overlap between IDE users of any sort and assembly programmers is probably quite small.
Are there any MS-branded features I should care about positively or negatively?
I'm a teacher, so I help people get started setting up a programming environment on a regular basis. If you take a new system that hasn't been configured for programming work at all, and install a fresh copy of VS Code, you'll see a number of calls to action regarding AI usage. I don't want to walk people through installing an editor only to then tell them they have to disable a bunch of "features".
This isn't an anti-AI stance; I use AI tools on a daily basis. I put "features" in quotes because some of these aren't really features, they're pushes to pay for subscriptions to specific Microsoft AI services. I want to choose when to incorporate AI tools, which tools to incorporate, and not have them popping up like a mobile news site without an ad blocker.
I'm probably barely scratching the surface of what I can do with it, but as a code editor it works well and it's the first time I've ever actually found code completion that seems to work well with the way I think. There aren't any formatters for a couple of the languages I use on a daily basis but that's a Me Problem - the overlap between IDE users of any sort and assembly programmers is probably quite small.
Are there any MS-branded features I should care about positively or negatively?