Among the frustrating parts of working with embedded systems is in establishing a stable workflow that you can re-use easily to bring up a new project. I like the vscode platformio extension way better than the arduino IDE and have been using it for a couple of years now in deploying on the esp8266.
I too, am enamored with the esp32. Espressif seems to really push on using ESP-IDF instead of Arduino as the development platform. Have you gotten ESP-IDF working under platformio? Do you use the vscode platformio extension? What kind of computer are you using?
I have an Esp-Eye and a Rover or 2 and have gotten the toolchain to work using the vscode espidf extension on a windows machine running WSL2 & ubuntu 20.04 (not in a remote vscode window). More work to do. So far, mainly in keeping myself unconfused over the multiple forks I have made in my quest for a stable workflow.
Maybe we should run a subtopic on this stuff?