At the on-line meet of 11 June 2026, I think James mentioned that many AI users prefer the Microsoft editor ‘Visual Studio’ for its integrated development environment approach.
It’s not hard to see why IDE’s have always been very popular, as they bring everything into the one window. They’re a ‘one stop shop’ as it were.
Here is one alternative to VScode (it’s the one I use), it uses two Unix components
- Ghostty: a terminal with built-in windows, that provides Tmux like facilities.
- Fresh Editor: Any of the awesome Unix editors can be used, Vim, Helix,Neovim etc
The window on the left is running Opencode, a Claude Code like AI Agent, the top right is ‘Fresh’ editor editing code, the bottom right is a CLI for terminal related ops. More windows can be added or removed with Ghostty, which features mouse operations for the main items which you can see on the top right toolbar.
I also use a fourth window, for um … Forth development (not shown here) which runs a JTAG editor connected to external electronics for embedded development.
You can really build whatever you need using https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty.
So there are a few very useful alternatives to the bloated Java pig that is VScode. These all are for use on a Unix OS, so if you seek a VI like editor, or a non VI like editor like ‘Fresh’ written in C, Zig, Rust etc, for minimal CPU resource usage, speed and stability this may be exactly what you’re looking for.