With a few exceptions, all of the development for Business Central applications takes place within Visual Studio Code. Exceptions include the use of Microsoft Word (or Microsoft SQL Server) for reporting, as we saw in Chapter 5, Queries and Reports, plus the work we may do in the JavaScript language to create compatible add-ins. While it is possible, development using a text editor is only appropriate for special cases, such as making modifications to existing objects, which is done by an advanced developer.
As an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Visual Studio Code provides us with a rich set of tools for our AL development work. While Visual Studio Code is not as fully featured as Microsoft's Visual Studio, it is intended to be a cross-platform, modern development toolkit. Most importantly, Visual Studio Code is the most popular IDE and chances are you are already familiar with it.