How is vscode not in the same league? JB feels way too bloated and slow and doesn't add anything significant over other offerings

It's not even close. vscode can approximate JB IDEs but that takes pulling in plugins on your own, managing their configuration, and adapting when the setup inevitably breaks. JB IDEs bake in everything you can get via vscode plugins with documentation, a cohesive experience, and regular maintenance to keep them working for you. Concrete examples that are better in JB land for me: git conflict resolution, refactoring (in numerous ways), jumping to definitions, finding usages (especially on Python projects).

Code intelligence (find usages, go to definition, refactor/rename/move, etc.) and debugging are on another level - more powerful, more reliable, with more edge-cases covered.

At least, that was so in dynamic languages, like Python, and PHP, last I checked.

For dotnet, Rider runs rings around VSCode. Even using the Resharper plugin, VSCode is nowhere near the same functionality. I even use Rider above Visual Studio because it works way better for mobile and cross platform. VSCode runs okay on the same hardware as Rider, but it is all too manual to configure. VS2026 is a horrible bloated pig that constantly grinds to a halt on the same hardware.

Maybe there exist better ways, but I'd say every coworker I've seen in a VScode variant uses freetext search to find everything.