I use vscode because it's free. I use eclipse because it's free. I use sublime because it's "free for evaluation" forever.

The convenient to download and install on any machine at any given time without having to deal with payment removes friction and it's a huge thing.

vim is free, and has a large user base. But even more people use VSCode because it's powerful, free, and easy to use. Meanwhile, folks are rebooting their boxes just to exit vim.

counterpoint: i pay for intellij because it’s great. eclipse can be free forever but that does not make it less of a dumpster fire.

Don't kid yourself with it. People use vscode, because it's free - first - and because it's great - second. It wouldn't have probably even 1% of it's user base and plugin writers otherwise.

There are tons of free options out there though. People chose to use VSCode from the list of free tools because it is great.

And I have no problem paying for an IDE, but I stopped because VSCode was as good, if not better, than any paid option out there for my uses.

If "free" and "has plugins" were what mattered, there is Notepad++, Atom, Emacs, and many other choices. VS Code is doing rather better than all of them.

I only said that price is an overriding consideration. It would not matter how much better it is, if it would not be free.