Best Code Editor for Windows 11 Setup Guide [2026]

Picking a code editor for Windows used to mean choosing between three or four familiar names. In October 2026 the list is longer, the machines are faster, and the wrong setup still wastes real time every single day through slow indexing, laggy extensions, or a WSL2 connection that never quite behaves. The sections below cover through a full, repeatable setup: installing the leading Windows 11 editors, wiring each one into WSL2 and Windows Terminal, running an actual benchmark script on your own hardware, and locking in a configuration you will not have to redo next month.

The approach below treats every editor the same way: same project folder, same extensions where possible, same benchmark script. By the end you will have hard numbers from your own machine rather than someone else’s marketing page, plus a portable settings profile you can carry to a new PC in minutes.

Budget about 70 minutes for the full walkthrough if you are starting from a clean Windows 11 install, or closer to 30 minutes if WSL2 and your primary editor are already in place and you just want to add a second editor for comparison. Each of the 13 steps below is written to stand on its own, so feel free to skip the ones that cover tools you already have configured and jump straight to the benchmarking steps.

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Why the Right Code Editor Still Matters on Windows 11 in 2026

Visual Studio Code has been the most-used development environment for five years running, with 75.9% of respondents reporting they use it in the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, which drew more than 49,000 responses from 177 countries across 62 questions covering 314 technologies. Visual Studio itself came in second at 29%, with Notepad++ at 27.4% and IntelliJ IDEA close behind at 27.1%. Vim held steady at 24.3%, a reminder that plenty of Windows developers still want a keyboard-first editor rather than a heavyweight IDE.

What changed this year is the AI-enabled layer sitting on top of those editors. The same Stack Overflow survey recorded Cursor usage at 18%, Windsurf at 5%, and Claude Code (a coding agent rather than a standalone editor) at 10%. Separately, JetBrains surveyed 24,534 developers across 194 countries and regions between April and June 2025 for its Developer Ecosystem Survey and found that 85% of respondents regularly use AI tools for coding, while 62% rely on at least one AI coding assistant, agent, or AI-enabled code editor. That is the backdrop for every choice in this guide: a code editor for Windows is no longer just a text box with syntax highlighting, it is the front door to an AI workflow, a WSL2 connection, and a Windows Terminal session all at once.

None of that means you should default to whatever is trending. A lightweight editor still wins for quick edits, a full IDE still wins for large Java or .NET codebases, and an AI-first fork of VS Code still wins when agentic coding is the point. The rest of this tutorial sets up several of them side by side so you can decide with your own data instead of a vendor’s benchmark chart.

There is also a switching cost that rarely shows up in a feature comparison. Every editor migration means re-learning a handful of keybindings, re-installing extensions, and re-tuning Windows-specific settings like Defender exclusions and WSL2 remote paths. That cost is low if you pick a VS Code-compatible fork like Cursor, since most of your muscle memory and extension list carries over directly. It is higher if you move to a genuinely different architecture, such as a JetBrains IDE or a terminal-first workflow built around Vim. Factor that migration cost into your decision alongside raw benchmark numbers, because the fastest editor on paper is not always the fastest one in practice if it costs you a week of relearned habits.

Prerequisites: What You Need Before You Start

You do not need a new machine for this tutorial, but you do need a few things in place before Step 1. The table below lists the minimum and recommended setup for comparing a code editor for Windows 11 under realistic conditions, including a WSL2 workload.

Requirement	Minimum	Recommended for this tutorial
Operating system	Windows 11, version 22H2	Windows 11, latest cumulative update installed via Windows Update
CPU	4 cores	8 cores or more (for parallel WSL2 and editor testing)
RAM	8 GB	16 GB or more
Free disk space	15 GB	40 GB or more (several editors plus a WSL2 distro)
Virtualization	Enabled in BIOS/UEFI	Enabled, with Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Platform features on
PowerShell	PowerShell 5.1 (built in)	PowerShell 7.x installed from the Microsoft Store
Admin access	Required for WSL2 install	Required for Windows Defender exclusion changes

You will also want a sample project to test with. Anything with a reasonably large dependency tree works well, since that is where indexing and extension overhead show up fastest. A medium-sized Node.js or .NET repository with a few thousand files is a good stand-in if you do not already have one on hand.

A few optional tools make the rest of the tutorial smoother without being strictly required. Git for Windows gives you a consistent command-line Git experience both inside and outside WSL2. Winget, which ships built in on current Windows 11 builds, is the fastest way to install and update most of the editors covered here without hunting down installer pages one at a time. If you plan to test a Java or Kotlin project with a JetBrains IDE later Having a JDK already installed (or letting the IDE download one automatically on first project open) will save you a detour mid-benchmark.

Steps 1 to 3: Prep Your Windows 11 Machine

The first three steps are entirely about the operating system layer underneath whichever code editor for Windows you eventually pick. Skipping them is the single most common reason people report a mainstream editor feeling slow on Windows 11 when the exact same editor feels snappy on a colleague’s Linux machine. None of this is editor-specific work, which is exactly why it belongs first: get it right once and every editor you install afterward benefits.

Step 1: Audit Your Hardware and Windows Build

Before installing anything, record a baseline. Open PowerShell as Administrator and run the following to capture your CPU, RAM, and current Windows build in one shot.

Get-ComputerInfo | Select-Object WindowsProductName, WindowsVersion, OsBuildNumber, CsProcessors, CsPhysicallyInstalledMemory | Format-List

winver

Keep this output somewhere you can find it later. If two editors perform differently on your machine than they do on a colleague’s, the first thing to check is whether you are actually running the same Windows build, the same number of logical cores, and the same amount of free RAM at the time of the test.

Step 2: Turn On WSL2 and Pick a Linux Distro

Most of the editors Can connect to a WSL2 distro as a remote development target, which keeps your Linux-targeted builds fast while the editor UI stays native to Windows. Install WSL2 with a single command in an elevated PowerShell window.

wsl --install -d Ubuntu

# After the reboot, confirm WSL2 is the active backend
wsl --status
wsl --list --verbose

Reboot when prompted, finish the Ubuntu first-run setup (username and password), and confirm that wsl --status reports version 2 as the default. If you already have WSL2 from an earlier project, skip straight to updating the kernel with wsl --update so every editor you test is talking to the same backend.

Step 3: Set Windows Defender Exclusions Before You Install Anything

Real-time antivirus scanning is one of the most common reasons a code editor for Windows feels sluggish compared with the same editor on macOS or Linux. Every file write during a build, a save, or an npm install gets scanned unless you explicitly exclude the relevant folders. Do this once, for every editor, before you start comparing speed.

# Run as Administrator
Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath "C:\Users\$env:USERNAME\Projects"
Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath "C:\Users\$env:USERNAME\AppData\Local\Programs"
Add-MpPreference -ExclusionProcess "Code.exe"
Add-MpPreference -ExclusionProcess "Cursor.exe"

Only exclude folders you control and trust, such as your own project directory and the editor’s install path. Excluding broad system folders defeats the point of running antivirus at all, so keep the list narrow and specific to the paths each editor actually touches.

The reason this matters more on a code editor for Windows than on most other software is file count, not file size. A single npm install or a Gradle build can touch tens of thousands of small files in a single pass, and each of those triggers a real-time scan unless the folder is excluded. The cumulative delay from thousands of tiny scans adds up to far more lost time than scanning one large file ever would, which is why this step comes before any editor install rather than after.

Steps 4 to 6: Install and Wire Up VS Code

VS Code is the natural starting point for this comparison because of its market position: 75.9% usage means most teams already have a baseline configuration, a shared extensions.json recommendation file, or at least a few colleagues who can sanity-check your setup. Getting VS Code installed, connected to WSL2, and wired into Windows Terminal first also gives you a known-good reference point to compare every other editor against in the steps that follow.

Step 4: Install Visual Studio Code the Right Way

Visual Studio Code’s own release archive lists version 1.142 as a stable 2026 release, with 1.143 running on the Insiders channel. Download the User Installer rather than the System Installer unless you specifically need an all-users install, since the User Installer does not require admin rights and updates more predictably in place.

# Winget works well if you prefer the command line
winget install --id Microsoft.VisualStudioCode -e --source winget

# Verify the install and check your version
code --version

On first launch, skip installing every extension you can find. Part of why VS Code benchmarks well is that it ships lean, and every extension you add brings its own activation cost. Install only what your current project actually needs, and revisit the list in Step 11.

If you manage multiple machines, consider grabbing the zip archive instead of the installer for at least one of them. The zip version runs in a fully portable mode with no registry entries and no auto-update service, which is useful for a locked-down work laptop where you cannot run installers with elevated permissions, or for keeping a known-good version pinned while you test a newer release elsewhere.

Step 5: Connect VS Code to WSL2

With the WSL extension installed, open your project directly inside the Linux filesystem rather than through the slower /mnt/c mount. From a WSL terminal:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/your-org/your-project.git
cd your-project
code .

That last command launches VS Code on Windows while running the backend server inside WSL2, which is the setup that gives you Linux-native file performance for anything that touches the filesystem heavily, such as a large node_modules tree or a Python virtual environment.

Step 6: Make Windows Terminal Your Default Integrated Shell

VS Code’s built-in terminal can launch Windows Terminal profiles directly, which saves you from juggling two separate terminal windows. Add this to your settings.json (accessible with Ctrl+Shift+P, then “Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON)”):

{
  "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.windows": "Ubuntu (WSL)",
  "terminal.integrated.profiles.windows": {
    "Ubuntu (WSL)": {
      "path": "wsl.exe",
      "args": ["-d", "Ubuntu"]
    }
  }
}

This is also where a lot of the appeal of VS Code’s extensibility comes from. As Anysphere co-founder Aman Sanger put it in a conversation about building Cursor as a VS Code fork, “this is a great thing with VS Code, where VS Code kind of invented the language server or the language server protocol.” That shared protocol is why terminal integrations, language extensions, and debugger adapters tend to work the same way across most of the editors in this guide.

Steps 7 to 9: Install the Alternatives and Put Them Side by Side

With VS Code set up as your reference point, install two or three alternatives and open the exact same project in each one. The goal here is not to pick a permanent new default on day one, it is to gather enough hands-on time with each editor that the benchmark numbers in Step 10 mean something. A number without context is just a number, while five minutes of actually navigating your own codebase in an unfamiliar editor tells you whether a fast startup time translates into a workflow you would actually want to use.

Step 7: Install Cursor and Import Your VS Code Setup

Cursor is a VS Code fork, which means it can import your keybindings, themes, and most extensions on first launch. Download the current Windows build from Cursor’s own site, run the installer, and when prompted choose the option to import settings from VS Code. This is the fastest way to get an apples-to-apples comparison, since you are testing the editor shell and its AI features rather than relearning a whole new interface.

Cursor’s own team has been explicit that responsiveness is a design goal rather than an afterthought. Co-founder Arvid Lunnemark summed up the philosophy on a podcast appearance by saying that “a big part of being fun is being fast a lot of the time.” Whether that holds up on your machine is exactly what Step 10’s benchmark script will tell you.

Step 8: Spin Up JetBrains Air or IntelliJ IDEA on the Same Project

IntelliJ IDEA sat at 27.1% usage in the 2025 Stack Overflow survey, close behind Notepad++, which tells you a large share of Windows developers are already running a full JetBrains IDE rather than a lightweight editor. If your stack is Java, Kotlin, or a polyglot monorepo, install JetBrains Toolbox first so you can manage IDE versions and updates from one place, then open the same project folder you used for VS Code and Cursor.

The tradeoff is upfront indexing time. A full IDE builds a much deeper project model than a lightweight editor, which costs minutes on first open but pays that back with more accurate refactoring and navigation on large codebases. Note the indexing time in your benchmark log so you can weigh it against the lightweight editors in the next step.

Step 9: Try Zed and Sublime Text for a Lightweight Baseline

Not every project needs a full IDE’s feature set, and Notepad++ held 27.4% usage in the same survey precisely because plenty of developers want something that opens instantly and gets out of the way. Install Sublime Text and, if you want a newer GPU-accelerated option, Zed, and open the same project folder one more time. These two exist to answer a single question: how much of what a heavier editor does do you actually use day to day?

Run each editor long enough to open a few files, search across the project, and trigger autocomplete at least once. That is enough to get a feel for responsiveness without needing to write a full afternoon’s worth of code in each one.

Pay attention to how each editor handles your project’s largest files and its project-wide search. A lightweight editor’s biggest weakness usually shows up there rather than at launch, since a smaller feature set sometimes means a simpler, less optimized search index under the hood. If project-wide search across your actual codebase feels sluggish in a lightweight editor, that is worth weighing against its faster cold start before you make it your daily driver.

Steps 10 to 11: Benchmark Every Editor on the Same Machine

This is the pair of steps that turns a gut feeling about speed into a number you can defend. Everything from here on assumes you have at least two editors installed and a real project to point them at. If you only installed VS Code so far, go back and grab at least one alternative from Steps 7 through 9 before continuing, since a benchmark with a single data point is not really a comparison.

Step 10: Write a Repeatable Startup and Memory Benchmark Script

Industry benchmark charts rarely match your hardware, your extensions, or your project size, so the only trustworthy number is one you measure yourself. The PowerShell script below times a cold launch and samples working-set memory a few seconds after the window opens, which is enough to compare editors consistently.

param(
    [string]$ExePath,
    [string]$ProjectPath
)

$start = Get-Date
$proc = Start-Process -FilePath $ExePath -ArgumentList $ProjectPath -PassThru
Start-Sleep -Seconds 8
$elapsed = (Get-Date) - $start
$mem = (Get-Process -Id $proc.Id -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue).WorkingSet64 / 1MB

Write-Output "Startup time: $($elapsed.TotalSeconds) seconds"
Write-Output "Memory after 8s: $([math]::Round($mem,1)) MB"

Run it three times per editor, close everything else, and average the results. Close every editor between runs so one does not inflate the memory reading of the next. Here is what the output looks like on a typical mid-range laptop, included purely as an example of the format you should expect, not as a claim about any specific editor’s real-world performance, which depends heavily on your own extensions and project size:

PS C:\Projects\your-project> .\benchmark.ps1 -ExePath "C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe" -ProjectPath "."
Startup time: 2.41 seconds
Memory after 8s: 312.6 MB

Log cold start (after a fresh reboot), warm start (closing and reopening), and memory with your actual project open, not an empty folder. An empty-folder benchmark flatters every editor equally and tells you nothing about the workload you actually care about.

Storage type matters more than most people expect here. An editor that benchmarks fast on an NVMe SSD can look noticeably slower on a machine still running a SATA SSD or, less commonly in 2026, a spinning disk, simply because so much of cold-start time is reading extension manifests and cached indexes from disk. If you are comparing benchmark numbers with a colleague, confirm you are both on similar storage before concluding one editor is actually faster than the other.

Step 11: Audit and Trim Your Extensions

Extension bloat is the single biggest lever you control after picking an editor. List everything installed and check which ones actually activate on startup versus only when needed.

# VS Code / Cursor
code --list-extensions

# Check activation events in the Developer: Startup Performance view
# Ctrl+Shift+P -> "Developer: Startup Performance"

Anything linting a language you are not currently using, or any theme extension beyond the one you have active, is a candidate for disabling rather than uninstalling outright. Disabling keeps the option available without paying the startup cost on every launch.

Steps 12 to 13: Lock In a Workflow You Will Actually Keep

By this point you have installed several editors, benchmarked them on your own project, and trimmed your extension list. The last two steps are about making your choice durable rather than something you have to redo every time you get a new laptop or your current one needs a clean reinstall.

Step 12: Turn On Settings Sync and Build a Portable Profile

Once you have picked a primary editor, sign in with a GitHub or Microsoft account and enable Settings Sync so your keybindings, snippets, and extension list follow you to the next machine. In VS Code or Cursor, open the Command Palette and run “Settings Sync: Turn On.” Pick which categories to sync (settings, keybindings, snippets, extensions, UI state) so you are not dragging machine-specific tweaks to a laptop with different screen dimensions.

Simplicity is part of why plenty of developers stick with a single mainstream editor rather than hand-tuning something more exotic. Claude Code creator Boris Cherny has said plainly that “I use VS Code because it’s simpler. I don’t use like Vim.” That preference is worth weighing against your own muscle memory before you commit a profile to sync across every machine you own.

Step 13: Wire Up Tasks, Keybindings, and a Build Shortcut

Finish the setup with a project-level task so you are not retyping build commands in the terminal every time. Create a .vscode/tasks.json file in your project root:

{
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "label": "Build and Test",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "npm run build && npm test",
      "group": { "kind": "build", "isDefault": true },
      "presentation": { "reveal": "always", "panel": "shared" }
    }
  ]
}

Bind it to a single keystroke with Ctrl+Shift+B (the default build shortcut in VS Code and Cursor), confirm it runs cleanly inside your WSL2 terminal from Step 6, and your setup is complete: editor installed, Defender tuned, WSL2 wired in, Windows Terminal integrated, and a one-key build.

Comparison Table: Which Editor Wins for Which Windows 11 Workload

With every editor installed and benchmarked on the same project, here is how to match the right tool to the right job rather than defaulting to whichever one is loudest on social media this month.

Editor	2025 usage share (Stack Overflow)	Best fit on Windows 11	WSL2 support
Visual Studio Code	75.9%	General-purpose daily driver, broadest extension ecosystem	Native Remote-WSL extension
Visual Studio	29%	.NET, C++, large enterprise solutions	Supported via WSL toolset integration
Notepad++	27.4%	Fast single-file edits, config files, logs	Not applicable (Windows-native editor)
IntelliJ IDEA	27.1%	Java, Kotlin, deep refactoring on large codebases	Supported via WSL interpreter/toolchain config
Vim	24.3%	Keyboard-only workflows, remote server editing	Runs natively inside the WSL2 shell
Cursor	18%	AI-assisted coding on top of a familiar VS Code shell	Inherited from its VS Code fork base
Claude Code	10%	Agentic coding tasks run from the terminal	Runs directly inside WSL2 or Windows terminal
Windsurf	5%	AI-native editing with an agent-first interface	Available, check current release notes

Treat the usage percentages as a signal of ecosystem size and extension availability, not a verdict on raw speed. A smaller, newer editor can still out-benchmark a mainstream one on your specific project, which is exactly why Step 10’s script matters more than any column in this table.

A practical way to use this table is to pick your primary editor based on project type first, then confirm with your own benchmark numbers that it actually performs acceptably on your hardware. If it does not, the table’s “Best fit” column gives you a short list of alternatives built for the same kind of work, rather than sending you off to research an entirely unrelated category of tool. Most developers end up running two editors long term anyway: one full-featured daily driver and one lightweight option for the quick edits that do not justify opening the heavier tool.

Common Pitfalls When Setting Up a Code Editor on Windows 11

Most of the setup problems people hit are self-inflicted rather than caused by the editor itself. The following mistakes show up repeatedly across forums and support threads for every editor Which suggests they are really Windows-and-WSL2 problems wearing an editor’s name.

Opening a project through /mnt/c instead of the WSL2 filesystem. This single mistake accounts for most of the “WSL is slow” complaints, since every file operation crosses the Windows-to-Linux filesystem boundary instead of staying native.
Installing every recommended extension on first launch. A fresh code editor for Windows install benchmarks fastest with zero extensions. Add them one at a time and re-test if startup time creeps up.
Forgetting to exclude the WSL2 virtual disk from Windows Defender. The VHDX file backing your Linux distro grows over time, and scanning it on every access adds up fast.
Running the benchmark script with other heavy apps open. Browser tabs with dozens of extensions, Slack, and background sync clients all skew memory and CPU readings.
Testing on an empty folder instead of a real project. Indexing cost, extension activation, and language server startup only show up with an actual codebase loaded.
Mixing up cold start and warm start numbers. A cold start right after reboot will always look worse than a warm start from a cached state, and comparing one editor’s cold number against another’s warm number is not a fair comparison.
Assuming a fork inherits every setting perfectly. Cursor imports most VS Code settings and extensions, but not all third-party extensions behave identically on a fork, so re-check anything mission-critical after import.

Troubleshooting Guide

Even a careful setup runs into friction. Here are the issues that come up most often when configuring a code editor for Windows 11 alongside WSL2 and Windows Terminal, along with the fix for each.

VS Code will not connect to WSL2. Run wsl --update and restart the WSL service with wsl --shutdown, then reopen your terminal and try code . again.
Windows Terminal profile does not appear in the editor’s terminal dropdown. Confirm the profile’s name field in Windows Terminal’s settings.json exactly matches what you referenced in the editor’s settings.json.
Editor launches noticeably slower after a Windows Update. Re-check your Defender exclusions, since major updates occasionally reset exclusion lists back to defaults.
High CPU usage that never settles after opening a large project. Check for a runaway language server or file watcher; disabling file watching on build output and dependency folders usually resolves it.
Settings Sync conflicts between two machines. Pick one machine as the source of truth, turn sync off on the other, clear its local sync cache, then turn sync back on to pull the correct state.
Extensions that worked in VS Code throw errors in a fork like Cursor. Check the extension’s marketplace page for compatibility notes, since a small number of extensions call VS Code-specific APIs that a fork has not implemented yet.
WSL2 distro uses far more disk space than expected. Run wsl --manage Ubuntu --set-sparse true (on builds that support it) or periodically compact the VHDX with Optimize-VHD from an elevated PowerShell session.
Keybindings stop responding after an update. Open the Keyboard Shortcuts troubleshooting view (Ctrl+K Ctrl+S, then the bug icon) to see which extension is intercepting the keystroke before your custom binding fires.
Benchmark numbers vary wildly between runs. Close background sync and update processes, disable Windows Search indexing on the test folder temporarily, and always average at least three runs rather than trusting a single measurement.

Advanced Tips for Power Users

Once the basic setup is solid, a few extra adjustments squeeze out more consistency and speed from a code editor for Windows 11 over the long run.

Pin your editor’s process priority. For CPU-bound tasks like a large TypeScript project’s type checking, setting the editor’s process to “Above Normal” in Task Manager’s Details tab can shave noticeable time off a full rebuild, though it is worth testing since it can also starve other foreground apps on a lower-core-count machine.

Separate your profiles by project type. VS Code and most forks support Profiles, which let you keep a lean, extension-free profile for quick edits and a fully loaded profile with linters, debuggers, and AI tooling for your main project. Switching profiles is faster than toggling individual extensions on and off every time you context switch.

Keep a second, minimal editor installed purely as a fallback. If your primary editor ever locks up mid-merge-conflict or a major update breaks an extension you depend on, having Notepad++ or Sublime Text already configured means you are never blocked from editing a file. Many developers who moved from VS Code to an AI-first fork still keep VS Code itself installed for exactly this reason, as software engineer Jack Marchant noted after Cursor “became my main editor after having used VS Code for a long time.” He still kept the original around rather than removing it outright.

Finally, automate the Defender exclusion and extension-install steps with a short PowerShell script you keep in version control. Rebuilding a dev machine from scratch, or setting up a new hire’s laptop, goes from an afternoon to about ten minutes once that script exists.

Watch your display scaling settings if you work across a laptop screen and an external monitor with different DPI values. Some editors handle per-monitor DPI switching better than others, and a UI that looks slightly blurry or incorrectly sized after moving windows between displays is a scaling issue rather than a graphics driver problem in most cases. Toggling the editor’s own display scaling override, where available, usually fixes it faster than hunting through Windows display settings.

Schedule your benchmark script to run automatically rather than relying on remembering to rerun it. Windows Task Scheduler can trigger the script from Step 10’s companion project in the next section on a weekly basis, dropping a fresh CSV into a folder you glance at occasionally. That turns editor performance monitoring into something that happens in the background instead of a chore you only remember after something already feels slow.

Complete Working Project: A Windows 11 Editor Benchmark Dashboard

Pulling every step together, here is a complete, working benchmark runner you can drop into any project folder. It loops over a list of installed editors, times the launch, samples memory, and writes a CSV you can open directly in Excel or a notebook for comparison.

# benchmark-editors.ps1
# Usage: .\benchmark-editors.ps1 -ProjectPath "C:\Projects\your-project"

param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [string]$ProjectPath,
    [int]$Runs = 3
)

$editors = @(
    @{ Name = "VS Code"; Path = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe" },
    @{ Name = "Cursor";  Path = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\cursor\Cursor.exe" },
    @{ Name = "Sublime Text"; Path = "C:\Program Files\Sublime Text\sublime_text.exe" }
)

$results = @()

foreach ($editor in $editors) {
    if (-not (Test-Path $editor.Path)) {
        Write-Warning "Skipping $($editor.Name): executable not found at $($editor.Path)"
        continue
    }

    for ($i = 1; $i -le $Runs; $i++) {
        $start = Get-Date
        $proc = Start-Process -FilePath $editor.Path -ArgumentList $ProjectPath -PassThru
        Start-Sleep -Seconds 8
        $elapsed = ((Get-Date) - $start).TotalSeconds

        $mem = 0
        try {
            $mem = [math]::Round((Get-Process -Id $proc.Id -ErrorAction Stop).WorkingSet64 / 1MB, 1)
        } catch {
            Write-Warning "Could not read memory for $($editor.Name) run $i"
        }

        $results += [PSCustomObject]@{
            Editor       = $editor.Name
            Run          = $i
            StartupSecs  = [math]::Round($elapsed, 2)
            MemoryMB     = $mem
        }

        Stop-Process -Id $proc.Id -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
        Start-Sleep -Seconds 3
    }
}

$results | Export-Csv -Path ".\editor-benchmark-results.csv" -NoTypeInformation
$results | Format-Table -AutoSize

Write-Output "Results written to editor-benchmark-results.csv"

Running this against your own project turns the whole exercise from opinion into evidence. Add any editor you installed during this tutorial to the $editors array, point ProjectPath at your real codebase, and you have a reusable tool you can rerun every time a major update ships for any of them, which is a far better long-term habit than picking a code editor for Windows once and never revisiting the decision.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Visual Studio Code still the best code editor for Windows 11 in 2026?
For general-purpose development it remains the most widely used option, with 75.9% usage reported in the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey. Whether it is the best choice for you depends on your project type and whether you want an AI-first fork like Cursor instead.

Does running a code editor inside WSL2 slow it down compared with a native Windows install?
Not when set up correctly. The slowdown people usually report comes from opening project files through the /mnt/c Windows filesystem bridge rather than cloning the project directly inside the WSL2 Linux filesystem, as covered in Step 5.

How much does Windows Defender actually slow down a code editor?
The impact scales with how many small files your workflow touches, which is why Node.js and other dependency-heavy projects feel it more than a single-file script. Setting exclusions as shown in Step 3 removes most of that overhead.

Should I pick Cursor or JetBrains Air instead of plain VS Code?
Cursor makes the most sense if you already like VS Code’s interface and want AI assistance built directly into the editing experience. A JetBrains IDE makes more sense for large, statically typed codebases where deep refactoring tools matter more than AI autocomplete.

Is Notepad++ still worth installing in 2026?
Yes for quick single-file edits. It held 27.4% usage in the 2025 Stack Overflow survey and remains the fastest option on this list for opening a config file or log and getting out immediately.

Can I run the benchmark script from this tutorial on a laptop instead of a desktop?
Yes, but expect more run-to-run variance from thermal throttling and background power-management behavior. Plug the laptop in and set the power plan to high performance before benchmarking for more consistent results.

Do I need to reinstall extensions every time I switch between VS Code and a fork like Cursor?
Usually not. Forks built on VS Code typically offer a one-time import of settings and extensions on first launch, which covers most cases, though a small number of extensions with VS Code-specific API calls may need manual reinstallation.

How often should I redo this comparison?
Rerun the benchmark script in Step 10 after any major Windows feature update or after a significant version bump for your primary editor. Both can shift startup and memory numbers enough to be worth re-checking.

Best Code Editor for Windows 11: 13 Steps, 70 Min [2026]