Believe them, VS Code is a strange beast in that it's really powerful and has a very flexible extension system... but that's a double edged sword because it lets the devs easily ignore features with the excuse that they should be done with a 3rd party extension.

EDIT - child comment is right, the following paragraph is not true! I was writing from my phone and remembered installing this extension [0] but now that I've checked it is for counting offsets from the beginning of the file, not lines and columns. Which I'd concede is not so much of a basic functionality expected in any editor.

[0]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ramyarao...

  And I mean *really* basic stuff... like a status bar label 
  that shows the line and column numbers where the cursor
  is! Yes, you already need an extension just for that.

I mean, that's just not true. The basic VS Code install will tell you the line and column numbers in the status bar without any plugins.

Usually, the only plugins I need to install is the language server plugin for whatever language I'm using. At least, that works for Go and Python while Node and JS/TS work right out of the box.

You're right. I've since arrived home and could check my VSCode, which led me to edit my comment above.

I meant to get VSCode to work as a decent development environment, more generally.

would you expand on this? i'm curious what i've been missing, and what possibilities there are!

for me, a TS using node nerd, vs code does these things well:

  1. ts language server
  2. decent plugins (that i can commit to scm)
  3. yarn 2 support 
  4. nice debugger interaction

is there more for me to have? is the core difference i use so much m$ stuff?

There are too many to list. I'd recommend using a JetBrains IDE to see what it has.

Off the top of my head, VSCode lacks a decent code formatter and a "search everywhere"-type command palette. And the Git and database support is not good either, but that's kind of a given.

I love the gitlens extension personally - I find it to be a big productivity boost when navigating a complex/legacy codebase.