Even if it took 3 minutes to load it wouldn't matter because I plan to work on the project for days if not hours. OTOH, like you mentioned feature parity just puts VSCode in a different league altogether.

3 minutes(the imagined extreme scenario) pales in comparison the hours of time most people waste in meetings, or sipping coffee, or chatting with colleagues.

Just how much do you plan to achieve in 3 minutes?