Axual

I chose VSC over a (paid) IntelliJ because of its relatively lightweight nature and ability to sync its config to the cloud, so I have the same setup on any device I use and sign in. The extensions are a bit daunting at first but my colleagues provide valuable feedback and it's great using the same extensions as they do because of increased productivity. I mostly use terraform code and k8s yaml files and the community just has outstanding extensions for this to work with.

Argo CD combined with ApplicationSets is a powerful way to manage Kubernetes deployments. We have integrated it with GitLab pipelines for CI/CD automation and Azure AD for SSO authentication. It focuses on one thing (enabling GitOps) and does it well. After over a year of production use, I highly recommend it!