I think most people use vscode exactly like they would use IntelliJ; it's hard for me to justify that vscode is an editor but intellij isn't.

I don't have everything setup in vscode. I mostly just use it for syntax highlighting and generally use a JetBrains IDE for programming (code navigation works much better imo)

I think you can go either way with vscode similar to the whole vi vs neovim with tons of plugins