I mean things like: Photoshop, Blender, video editing software, MuseScore, Ableton, etc. And of course, text editors / IDEs :P

> If I'm using a word processor, it's because I want someone else to be able to read and, quite often, contribute to what I'm creating.

Well, the vast majority of things I write, I write by myself. When I have to collaborate I (begrudgingly :)) use Overleaf / Google Docs.

Photopea is a browser based photoshop; it is very good. VS Code is an electron based IDE, also very good (and there are various web variants as well). There was some kind of high quality online video editor my old landlord (who has a small video production company) used to edit 4k video with his macbook air. I don't know about audio, though I suspect there are more than a few options - yet probably less than for everything else, I'm not sure how good those physical device interfaces are now.

Aa for 3D stuff; it looks like solid works have some kind of cloud platform. How much of the workstation load is there I don't know.

I for one would not call VS Code an IDE. Too many features missing imho...

such as? it has step-through debugging, automatic code building + running, source control integration. What else?

I'm guessing elisp...

Those are not productivity applications, they are all tailored to specific purposes. The only one that I can say might be considered a productivity application is text editors/IDEs, but even then it's tenuous. No one is going to call Blender or Ableton a productivity application

Isn't VS Code the most popular IDE currently?

Sure, as a local app that happens to use Electron instead of Qt. How is that relevant?

Most likely. It's not the best IDE but it is likely the best free one. Out of the box VS Code is pretty much good to go while others are either paid or take a lot of config.

I have attempted to use vim but I just can't be bothered working out how to turn it in to VS code. If I have to decide between multiple ways to install plugins with their own tradeoffs, its already too much work when vs code just works.

Emacs is also free :-)

No. At least according to this: https://pypl.github.io/IDE.html

1. Visual Studio

2. Eclipse

3. VS Code

It's a code editor, not an IDE. ;)

With current state of the plugins, this distinction no longer makes any sense.

I was editing a Word Document in MS Word just this afternoon. It was very unresponsive after sentence selection.

I decided to convert it to ePub, and edit it in the Calibre ePub Editor.

Fast again. Responsive.

I will convert it back to .DOC when I finish.

You can collaborate on office docs in Office365, Teams and Sharepoint. Also, Google will convert Word. Quite a few people and organizations still prefer the richer feature set and combined suite in Office, or even iWork. Excel is still king of the spreadsheet and doesn't look to be going anywhere.