Yes, it's possible to see a performance difference between VS Code and CLion. CLion is optimized for C++ development, especially debugging. In contrast, VS Code relies on extensions that can slow things down, particularly with GDB/LLDB. The slower performance in VS Code could be due to debugger setup, IntelliSense indexing, or configuration issues.

You can also use a debug_template.hpp file for debugging, like I do in competitive programming, to speed up the debugging process. Simply download this file, add the header to the file where you want to debug, and use debug(var) to debug any variable (any STL data structure also).

For more help with C++ debugging in VS Code, check out this link on setting up debugging in VS Code here.