I think Home Assistant Supervised on top of a generic Linux install would be more appropriate for a user with linux/programming background like you. Please be informed that if you do this, it will only be officially supported if the base OS is Debian and nothing else than HA is running on the machine.
Yes, Visual Studio is, but it’s not the same as Visual Studio Code. There’s even a Home Assistant Plugin for Visual Studio Code, which will auto-complete entities which is quite handy and other stuff as well.