By experience, i mean the whole UX - which is as much the interface to the LLM as it is the LLM itself, imo. Ie i'm not terribly interested in constantly telling an LLM what i want, prodding it to do the right thing, etc. I'm more interested in ways it can be easy and correct - even if that's limited in functionality. Ie perhaps automatically suggesting docs, knowing what style to use, etc.

Right. Continue is a bit more hands on, conversational. I've used Llama Coder for code completions and generation right on the editor to some success.

A sibling comment suggested Wingman but I haven't tried it.

yes i'd second deepseek-coder and check out wingman. it's a relatively new extension, snappy and with good ux.

Is this the one? https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=nvms.ai-...

There's another one called Wingman Copilot as well: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=WingmanC...

yes, it's the nvms one.