Developers can streamline their workflow by using containers to avoid installing software and dependencies directly on their machines, and the Visual Studio Code Remote - Containers extension facilitates this process by allowing development within a containerized environment. This guide explains how to set up a development environment using VS Code, Docker Desktop, and the Remote - Containers extension to work with Pulumi's infrastructure as code engine without requiring the Pulumi CLI installation. It details the steps to create a devcontainer using a Pulumi Dockerfile, configure container credentials securely, and use Pulumi to deploy resources such as an S3 bucket or a Kubernetes cluster. The setup allows for efficient infrastructure management and can be shared through a repository, encouraging collaboration and experimentation with infrastructure as code examples.