You cherry-picked a few things where VSCode has some extension support, but I can assure you that the differences are huge.
> The latter is "Rename symbol",
No, I'm talking about linter warnings providing smart fixes, which overall are not provided by the Go plugin, and is a mixed bag with other languages. GoLand has tons of fixes for things like unused arguments, inconsistent receiver names, incorrect spelling, and so on. And the fixes are previewed before they are applied.
But let's look at "Rename symbol". As an example of how primitive VSCode is, consider this in Go. If the rename doesn't work — for example, because it results in a conflict with an existing name in some file — it will just abort; it's all or nothing. GoLand, meanwhile, allows you to inspect the refactor preview and tweak the places where there are problems, before you apply the whole thing.
VSCode also has no awareness of implementations. If you try to rename, in IDEA, a method implemented from an interface, it will suggest altering all implementations, including the interface it came from. IDEA even goes further and will pick up strings that look related, such as in mocks, debug strings, comments, and so on.
> [Git support]
I have used GitLens, but the experience is vastly inferior to IDEA's. With GitLens, you have to compare the entire working tree (by selecting both versions to compare), which gets shown as a (not live!) snapshot in the left sidebar. You then have to click the file to compare. In IDEA, you simply select "Compare with Branch...", "Compare with Revision..." or any of the many other comparison methods, and you get the diff for the current file.
I also vastly prefer IDEA's diff UI, which can collapse unchanged portions (like classic UNIX diff). And while VSCode aligns the files strictly by inserting gaps, IDEA will cleverly align the code with visual markers, which I find much more readable. (IDEA has a toggle for the VSCode mode, of course. It also supports unified diffing as a toggle.)
I guess the GitHub PR extension has similar functionality as IDEA's, but the UI is primitive in comparison.
> The latter is "Rename symbol",
No, I'm talking about linter warnings providing smart fixes, which overall are not provided by the Go plugin, and is a mixed bag with other languages. GoLand has tons of fixes for things like unused arguments, inconsistent receiver names, incorrect spelling, and so on. And the fixes are previewed before they are applied.
But let's look at "Rename symbol". As an example of how primitive VSCode is, consider this in Go. If the rename doesn't work — for example, because it results in a conflict with an existing name in some file — it will just abort; it's all or nothing. GoLand, meanwhile, allows you to inspect the refactor preview and tweak the places where there are problems, before you apply the whole thing.
VSCode also has no awareness of implementations. If you try to rename, in IDEA, a method implemented from an interface, it will suggest altering all implementations, including the interface it came from. IDEA even goes further and will pick up strings that look related, such as in mocks, debug strings, comments, and so on.
> [Git support]
I have used GitLens, but the experience is vastly inferior to IDEA's. With GitLens, you have to compare the entire working tree (by selecting both versions to compare), which gets shown as a (not live!) snapshot in the left sidebar. You then have to click the file to compare. In IDEA, you simply select "Compare with Branch...", "Compare with Revision..." or any of the many other comparison methods, and you get the diff for the current file.
I also vastly prefer IDEA's diff UI, which can collapse unchanged portions (like classic UNIX diff). And while VSCode aligns the files strictly by inserting gaps, IDEA will cleverly align the code with visual markers, which I find much more readable. (IDEA has a toggle for the VSCode mode, of course. It also supports unified diffing as a toggle.)
I guess the GitHub PR extension has similar functionality as IDEA's, but the UI is primitive in comparison.