The default installation is very stable and responsive, while also very feature complete (most users will need few, if any, extensions). It does seem to run best when there are no major memory constraints. Be careful when installing extensions; test with many small files, and some very large files after installing new extensions to avoid major performance penalties.

Integrated extension manager with very responsive searching and notifies you of extention updates. Extentions for many languages and frameworks with excellent intellisense/integration. Still lacking many feature based extentions that larger extention repositories have such as those from Atom, or Sublime.

It supports Windows, Linux (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Redhat, ...), MacOS

Easily accessible views for the integrated explorer, search/replace, debugger, plugin manager, git. Sublime/Atom like command pallet. Very intuitive and easy to use settings interface (easy for most, powerful for pros). Responsive UI. On the whole, certainly geared towards experienced coders (not green coders), but all that is really assumed is familiarity with JSON (to realize it's potential).

Debugging support is available for several languages. Conditional breakponits (and hit counts). Inline values. Column breakpoints (great for minified code, or inline closures).

Convenient quick integrated terminal at project directory. Easy to customize.
(even on windows e.g.: cmd, git-for-windows, wsl (bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows), powershell, etc.)

Like atom, it is built on Electron (Chromium + Node.js). Ultimately it's the moden web platform. A platform many feel comfortable hacking on.

For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well.

There's a new release of Visual Studio Code every month. If you are one of the insiders then releases are daily.

Used to be much faster than Atom despite being built on the same technologies (Atom has since caught up). The main factor affecting speed, will likely be the plugins you opt to install.

It's really nice to see how the code editor evolves. Every month there is a new version with great communication of new features and changes.

Enriched code completion is available for some languages bridging the gap between an editor and IDE.

You don't need to configure and add plugins before being productive. However, you can add plugins if needed but for the basics you're well covered.

Snippets are templates that will insert text for you and adapt it to their context, and in VSC they are highly customizable.

Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plug-ins available to extend its functionality.

Familiar keybinds (Ctrl+C/V/S). Also has plugins for adopting default keybinds from Atom, Sublime, Vim, etc. Configured in json with intuitive UX help for new coders or pros. (Mouse combination binds do not appear to be configurable as of Q1 2017).

Like Adobe Bracket Editor's ability to edit css from html files by providing an inline embedded editor, VSCode expands on the concept with peek-ing.

With two plugins and the RLS is the best editor/IDE with Rust support

Feels just as fast as grep-ing!

All it takes is one stop for all the features many people need.

Released under the MIT License.

Alt+Click to place multiple cursors
Shift+Alt+Drag to column select
Sadly it appreas that these cannot be customized yet, though there is an open issue (as of 2017-06-18 you can now customize the multi cursor placement (mouse) bind somewhat, so there does seem to be some attention here.

There is very solid TypeScript integration in Visual Studio Code. Both are developed by Microsoft and VSC itself is written in TypeScript.

Now can auto generate much of a JSDoc comment.

Excellent Python plugin, originally created by Don Jayamanne, now hired by Microsoft to extend and maintain the extension.

ESLint integrates great. You can define your rules trough .eslintrc.* as usual and vs code will autofix your code on save. So your code is always in style.

The ease of getting assistance and finding tutorials is increasing as the community grows.

Task runners display lists of available tasks and performing these tasks is as simple as a click of the mouse.

VS-Code has the speed of Sublime and the power of WebStorm. Perhaps this is the best software that Microsoft has ever created.

It supports pretty web rtl languages like arabic languages when most of other editors don't support it.

These features allow you to have a glance at code without opening it as a whole in a separate tab. Moreover, editing is allowed.

The Omnisharp plugin is very powerful providing full sln, csproj, and project.json support.

Visual Studio Code has integrated Git control, guaranteeing speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript.

It leverages TypeScript compiler functionality to statically type check JS (type inference, JSDoc types) with "javascript.implicitProjectConfig.checkJs": true option.