They are not putting _that_ much energy into Monaco, and these are not terribly huge systems. Also, I've been doing this for ten years, so that helps, in terms of experience.

Monaco is maintained by a single guy from my understanding: https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor/graphs/contributo...

It just shows many contributors but looking at code commits and general activity (maintainers) in issues only Alexandru Dima comes out.

That's not where the monaco code lives. That's just for documentation. I think the actual code lives in the vscode repo

I wonder how one Finnish engineer could possibly compete with all Microsoft's many engineers in the OS space.

I'd wager, by cloning another successful OS. Also, all Microsoft engineers didn't work exclusively on the kernel.

It is possible that less than 2 people at Microsoft are working on Monaco full time but just getting passive improvements over time. Never underestimate 2 smart dedicated engineers.

You say competing with Microsoft, but, CodeMirror is being used as the editor in Chrome, Firefox and Safari's dev tools, as well as Light Table, Brackets and Bitbucket - according to the blurb on their own home page.

I have no doubt that if those parties get more involved in CodeMirror, things could move very fast.