I use both, and it really depends on the language.

Something like Java is really benefitted from IntelliJ, Spring integration is excellent, but especially scripting languages like Python or JavaScript/Typescript don't get enough uplift and you might as well use VS Code.

I mean for Java. IntelliJ is made for Java. If you want to do Python, Jetbrains (the creator of IntelliJ) made PyCharm. For Javascript, they made Webstorm.

To each their own, I would still continue to use VSCode even if IntelliJ's current version was free.

Even Jetbrain themselves realised this since they are creating a VSCode clone called Fleet.

Granted; I was very junior then--and I think my issues may have been mostly related to the finnicky nature of java tooling and dependencies rather than the IDE itself.