I prefer to just make a big "devbox" docker with all the utilities I need installed, and the home directory as a docker volume.
The advantage is i don't have to fiddle with containers for every little program, no startup delay for every program, and my base ubuntu install stays clean and stable (which runs a VM and other services so stability is important).
It does have a few warts, the main one being you can't have the entire container root volume be a docker volume, so to install new programs persistently inside the devbox i have to rebuild the image (if they don't live completely in the home volume). But logically its an okay tradeoff because the only way to make the whole environment reproducible is to specify things at build time.
I use the Remote Development extension for Visual Studio Code, which, among other things, allows you to attach an editor window to a running container.
The advantage is i don't have to fiddle with containers for every little program, no startup delay for every program, and my base ubuntu install stays clean and stable (which runs a VM and other services so stability is important).
It does have a few warts, the main one being you can't have the entire container root volume be a docker volume, so to install new programs persistently inside the devbox i have to rebuild the image (if they don't live completely in the home volume). But logically its an okay tradeoff because the only way to make the whole environment reproducible is to specify things at build time.