The whole damn thing just uses only one thread for UI, how is that smooth?

Mostly in context of text editing/auto completion hints. With e.g. intellij there's enough choppiness/delay in typing and completion to really put me off.

Have you tried the new versions with Zero Latency Typing? As the name implies, they managed to basically eliminate all latency on typing, even beating apps like notepad++ and emacs on latency. It's switched on by default in the current release.

https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#windows

Was that before or after Visual Studio became a bloated pig?