Lesson 4 of 5 · 15–25 minutes

VS Code, your editor

🏠The everyday picture

You can write a letter in any notebook, but a writer's desk has good light, a dictionary, a spell-checker and everything within reach. VS Code is a developer's desk.

📘What it really is

VS Code (Visual Studio Code) is a free code editor from Microsoft, the most widely used in the world. Download it only from code.visualstudio.com.
What it gives you:
colour-coded code that makes structure easy to see;
an Explorer panel showing your project's files and folders;
a built-in terminal (View → Terminal) that opens in your project folder;
extensions for languages, formatting and AI assistants;
Git integration showing what you've changed (Module 9).
Open a whole folder (File → Open Folder), not single files. A project is a folder.

🖱️Try it

Install VS Code from code.visualstudio.com.
File → Open Folder → choose your my-first-site folder.
Create a file called index.html and type Hello, world. Save it (Ctrl + S or Cmd + S).
Open the built-in terminal (View → Terminal) and type ls (or dir). Your new file is listed.

✅Quick check

Why open a folder in VS Code instead of a single file?

Show the answer

A project is many files working together; opening the folder lets VS Code show and search them all, and the terminal starts in the right place.

Where should you download VS Code from?

Show the answer

The official site, code.visualstudio.com.