Erich Gamma once said that VS Code was an overnight success that took 10 years in the making. Those 10 years were quite intense. Before becoming one of the most widely used development tools in the world, VS Code started with a small team creating online developer tools out of Zurich. It was called Monaco, then Visual Studio Online Monaco, then Ticino (why not?), became a desktop editor, went open source, grew into an ecosystem of its own, returned to the browser, and helped establish a whole bunch of open protocols along the way. And just when it seemed like the hardest part was over, AI arrived. This is the story of how VS Code got here, told by the people who built it and the developers who helped shape it. And now, how it's adapting once again as AI transforms the very concept of a code editor.
