Hi Mike,
In the past, Rick used VS. However, he decided to switch to VS Code for the remastered version of the courses for the reasons you listed in your first sentence. VS comes with a lot more functionality by default, which we never use in this course.
As for me, I stick with VS because I have been using it for ages, and it still works well. I would not see any benefits for my workflow if I used VS Code for C#. For beginners, VS Code is probably the better program as it is not as overwhelming as VS.
Long story short, please feel free to use your preferred script editor. 
See also:
- Forum User Guides : How to mark a topic as solved