Visual Studio Code VS thonny

For IDE-heavy teams, BYOK (bring your own key) can be interesting, no matter whether you live in WebStorm or VS Code. On the JetBrains side, the JetBrains AI plans and Junie BYOK docs allow it, and most VS Code AI extensions offer the same idea: keep the IDE, connect provider keys, pay the provider.

One can (maybe, probably) disable copilot completely in vscode: chat.disableAIFeatures

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/309947

I am considering pinning whatever the earliest version in which this setting was introduced. I can't think of a single feature VSCode has implemented in the last three years that I couldn't go without. The binary for 121 is like 50% larger than 120.

Option 1: Raw editing in IDE. You open the .md file in VS Code or whatever you use. Syntax highlighting shows you the structure. Maybe you toggle a preview pane. This works for quick edits but becomes painful for anything involving tables, diagrams, or complex formatting.

The Google Cloud Shell- available on every Google Cloud project — comes with a built-in code editor that allows you to browse file directories, view and edit files, with continued access to the Cloud Shell. The Cloud Shell Editor is available by default with every Cloud Shell instance, and is based on Code OSS.

You'll need Python 3.8+ and pip for the quickstart, with venv recommended for isolation. Install the requests library for HTTP calls. VS Code with the Python extension works well as an editor, though PyCharm or Sublime Text work equally well. You'll also need a free Foxit developer account.

Now here's the key point: Antigravity 2.0 is a huge departure from 1.0 in the sense that it is functionally no longer based on Microsoft's VS Code. That means a huge majority of all the personalizations from 1.0 will not carry over to 2.0.

There's a one-line pull request open against microsoft/vscode. It changes the default value of a setting called git.addAICoAuthor from "off" to "all". The PR is titled, with no embellishment, "Enabling ai co author by default." It was opened on April 15, 2026 by cwebster-99, a member of the VS Code team. By the time the HN thread on the PR hit 1,239 points and 646 comments in early May, the practical effect was already shipping: every commit you make in VS Code, regardless of whether you wrote the code yourself or had Copilot write it, gets a Co-authored-by: Copilot trailer in the commit message.

The Pico reboots itself. Then, open the Thonny IDE, configure the interpreter to "MicroPython (Raspberry Pi Pico)", and select your connected board. Using Thonny's file explorer, you can add the required library.

There is a version of Thonny[1] designed for use with the Pico that is great for education. Raspberry Pi have some good resources on getting started[2].

If your target audience is school kids, you really can't go past the micro:bit and Makecode[3].

1. https://thonny.org

2. https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/getting-started...

3. https://makecode.microbit.org

Thonny IDE (or any serial REPL-capable IDE)

Raspberry Pi Pico (MicroPython): The Thonny IDE is highly recommended and often pre-installed in Raspberry Pi OS.

The nice thing about Python is that because it's so pervasive as a teaching language, there are many tools for it that specifically cater to this niche. In particular, https://thonny.org is very nice for explaining basic programming concepts like expression evaluation and function calls.

And yeah, turtle graphics is the time-honored method of teaching things like loops, recursion, and parametrization via functions step by step in a way that is visually intuitive. Things like polygons, stars, spirals, and eventually basic fractals like snowflakes and ferns.

Thonny or IDLE are great starting points for beginners due to their simplicity. As you become more comfortable, VS Code or PyCharm Community Edition offers more features to help you develop your skills.

Install Thonny and run it. Then go to Tools -> Options, to configure the ESP32C3 device in Thonny to match the settings shown in the screenshot below.

The recommended way to programm MicroPython on the Raspberry Pico is to use the Thonny IDE. Accessing the Badger with reveals the following file structure: