This is what I used in college. It works great, but its much slower and more tedious to use compared to markdown code blocks. At one point I switched from using google docs to using the export to pdf feature on a static site generator because I was writing documents with a ton of code blocks and inline code formatting. It saved me a ton of time highlighting code and clicking about in the side panel.

I know there are LaTeX addons that let you do things like $$\frac{1}{2}$$ and then render the entire document. Makes me wonder what it would take to do something similar for code.