A file explore is great only for browsing (to get a sense of the project) and managing files (moving renaming, especially in batch). Actually opening file is better with a finder (either filename or content) and a fuzzy filter. I use emacs and consult is a great package for that (the native features mostly present a buffer with the result). A step up from VSC is acting over a result buffer and have the changes reflected back to the normal buffer. Like renaming functions when LSP can’t help you.