Obvious answer: it's the only IDE-like thing that's both well supported and caters to the huge population of JavaScript-only developers, who generally don't want to use IntelliJ or similar products because they can't customise it using only web-stack skills.

That is, if JetBrains had made JS plugins first class citizens of their products, possibly VS Code wouldn't be as popular as it is.

I use vscode even though I don't particularly like it. Imo rubymine is a better editor but vscode does 90% of the job while not costing $300/year.

I'm curious where you live. Is $300/year a big expense for you? Computers and developer salaries are usually much higher.

Sublime was the leader before VSCode and it had python plugins. VSCode is popular because it works so well with TypeScript

As a user of VSCode, I use it in spite of it being based on Electron because there are no other good alternatives. It is noticeably very slow on many tasks, and has a large startup time. I recently had it basically become unusable when opening a 2MB yacc file and had to switch to Sublime Text to edit the file. I much prefer Sublime Text in terms of speed, but VSCode simply has more and better extensions for different programming languages making it better for day-to-day coding. If somebody were to make a performant text editor that has similar features to VSCode I would switch in a heartbeat.

I was a strong supporter of VSCode for a long period of time. Now I realise there is always an alternative.

After taking time to learn my tools I can't use vscode anymore because of how inefficient and restrictive it is now for my workflow. I mainly prefer tools that can last a lifetime and time you've investend now can yeld much better results across several decades of usage.

Here is short list of tools I can't live without: magit, org-mode, undo-tree (actualy it was a feature request and vscode team said it's too compticated for broad audience), ability to hack your code editor as you wish. Ability to work all day without touching a mouse once.

VSCode is proof that an Electron app can be performant, but that's not the rule, and most people writing Electron apps aren't as talented as the VSCode team.

Also, there's an expectation that an IDE will be somewhat heavyweight. I don't mind if VSCode or IntelliJ grabs a few gigs or RAM, because I live inside those applications and depend on the features they provide.

What I don't want or need is Yet Another Electron Based Markdown Editor that gobbles up half my laptop's memory so that I can edit a hundred line text document.

I do not love electron applications. They gobble RAM. Allocation is the enemy of performance.

I stopped using VS Code because of the billions of files it ships with (does anyone remember DLLs these days or what?) and its performance and debugging capabilities were very disappointing.

Electron makes it easy to build badly-performing apps. VSCode has put a lot of effort into avoiding this.