- find definition
- find usages
- rename
- extract method
- detect code duplication
- highlight unused symbols(vars or functions)
- understand frameworks and libraries
- can suggest useful transformation or code simplification
- Intellij can understand type documentation like JSDoc and PHPDoc and use it in completion and highlight errors if using the wrong type or object member
- smart spellchecking, spellchecking that understand when it is in a comment or if it is a symbol name
- good VCS support(diff, commit, push)
- good debugging support
- IDEs have by default a lot of linting and code analyzing tools setup, trying to go from Intellij to VS Code defaults is a big downgrade , maybe it could be partially fixed by installing many plugins but I personally want to pay for a good program made by professionals and keep them profitable(and not have JetBrains fail or get bought by Google or Microsoft)