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).