

It's based on the Electron open-source framework. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight multiplatform IDE (Integrated Development Environment), that lets users add a wide variety of extensions (commonly called plug-ins in other IDEs).

I encourage you to watch this very interesting Visual Studio Code launch interview with Erich Gamma on Channel 9 ( ). In April 2015, the team released the initial version of Visual Studio Code. At Microsoft, Gamma led a small development lab out of Zurich, Switzerland. He's most known as one of the “gang of four” authors of the influential “Design Patterns” book. In 2011, a Swiss computer scientist named Erich Gamma joined Microsoft.
