> It's Emacs for Javascript people

I'll accept this premise.

> a good thing since Emacs is moribund

And here we part ways.

> and most programmers are at least a little bit Javascript people.

You might be living in a bubble.

> A highly programmable, cross-platform editor with zillions of extensions/modes that support all sorts of languages and environments.

Agreed; I think you're actually underselling how helpful it is that it's apparently a lot easier to get started with than emacs or the vi family. Power tools with a lower learning curve is a good thing.

> People complain about its resource requirements and performance, just like they did with Emacs.

And they're right to do so, especially with Moore's law wearing thin. Besides which, emacs (and n/vim, for that matter) are still around, and are just as functional in a much smaller resource footprint.

> Vi(m) users are the natural enemy of VSCode, just like they were the natural enemy of Emacs, continuing their long proud tradition of being wrong about everything.

LOL, that's... semi-fair, even if you're on the wrong side, of course;)

> I think that's roughly where it fits 'philosophically'.

I think it's fair to call VSCode "EMACS but with JS", but I think you're really glossing over the issues that it has in practice; maybe with a decade of maturation it'll be on par, but today I would argue that it is a resource hog, and still suffers from some poor design choices (such as letting extensions trample eachother, per the upthread discussion).

The difference between VSCode and Emacs is the difference between an extensible editor and a software omnitool intended to be extended, shaped, and refined as you work with it. Writing short programs in Emacs Lisp, seeing their effects immediately in the live editor environment, and then (should they prove generally useful) refining them into full-fledged modes or commands is quite a bit different than writing a packaged extension.

There is, still, nothing like Emacs in the editor world today. As much as Visual Studio Code gets right, it has a long way to go to get within spitting distance of Emacs in terms of adaptability and power (to say nothing of resource consumption).

I think the relative sizes of the 'Most programmers have at least some minimal familiarity with Javascript' bubble and the 'Emacs is not moribund' bubble speak for themselves and offer sufficient retort :)

If it work for you good, if not, fine. Just don't get crazy about it. It's just an editor!!

Why do you think that Vim users were/are wrong about everything?

But I think Vim bindings in an IDE or Vim with a LSP plugin is the killer combo.

The alternative used to be writing code over VNC (not fun!), but we’re now moving towards VS Code Remote. I don’t see myself changing to it anytime soon, though.

e.g. Would anyone take a plane that has modal cockpit buttons?

The big thing that classic vi got wrong with modes from a usability perspective is that changing modes is mostly invisible. In vim, however, you can configure it to change the cursor shape in different modes, and this is a pretty effective cue. (It's also the default behavior in gvim.)

(But ok, thats maybe just me - thought this is a common experience, and I just wouldn't like to sit behind a pilot doing the same...)