i am wondering if anyone is successfully using SPFX in Visual Studio?
SPFX as it is is a nice idea, compared to how SharePoint development took place in the pre-2016 and SPO time. But it comes with this downside: Visual Studio Code. I see that Microsoft maybe plans to appeal to the more "hacky" Javascript volks and tied the SPFX development to VS Code, but VS Code is far from where Visual Studio is. Let alone refactoring of class names and files. There is that https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-fx-vs-extension Repo, but it seems to not get much time and love.
Is there any other way to develop SPFX in the grown-up Visual Studio?
The answer by Xin is not correct... that is CSOM... CSOM !== SPFx.
To be direct, there's zero value in what Visual Studio brings to the table for SPFx dev unless you're talking about Azure DevOps integration.
The reason people focus on VSCode is it reaches more developers and all you need is an editor. You don't NEED a full-blown IDE as there are no designers / wizards / etc to help you along the way.
A SPFx project is simply a Node.js project. If you get the Node.js tools for VS, you can use that. There is absolutely nothing special with a SPFx project. Treat it as a Node.js project in VS and you're good to go.
The reason that community addin doesn't get much love is that there isn't much demand for it. But all it does is simply run the Yeoman generator for SharePoint. IOW, it automates running the same command-line tools for you. From that point forward, you have a Node.js project and the above applies.