The VSCode remote access is IMO better than just accessing files remotely; it’s s a large part of why I use it instead of Pycharm.

It splits the editor into a UI that is run locally, and a server that does the heavy lifting on the remote machine. Conceptually it’s very similar to Jupiter, where you have a user facing front end with the UI run on JavaScript and rendered by your browser, and a python kernel backend, and the two communicate over pipes that can be run over the internet.

What it effectively means for VSCode is that you get a more seamless experience than I experienced with Pycharm remote development.