VS Code (which I like and have used extensively for a number of projects) is kind of an IDE, but it doesn't quite compare to full blown Java IDEs IMO.

It's an editor with syntax highlighter, autocompletion, go-to-def, and go-to-uses that also builds the code, runs the code, runs the tests, and also allows you to run them (code & tests) under a debugger. Oh, and it also has projects/solutions/workspaces/whatever they're called.

Back in my days™ that's what they used to call an "IDE". But today that's just "glorified Notepad++", I guess? What features does it miss that stop it being a full-blown IDE?

I wrote kind of like an IDE :-)

Maybe I'm just a spoiled brat, but I came to Java from C, PHP, Visual Studio (the old one) and learned how nice programming could be before I left for .Net Core and frontend (with much TypeScript), mostly in VS Code but sometimes in Rider and Webstorm.

To me, to be a real IDE these days you need to have proper refactoring support.

And to a spoiled brat like me that excludes almost everything except Rider, Visual Studio with Resharper, NetBeans, Eclipse and IntelliJ :-)

But yes, I too am old enough to remember back when the C/Assembler program we used to program microcontrollers were considered IDEs.

And technically you are of course correct :-)

I guess a better classification would be: IDE level 1,2,...n where what I call IDEs today are really level 3 IDEs.