It's fair to call VS Code's popularity unprecedented and historic. And it's already being used to shape the future of the industry. E.g., we're watching the decline of local development right now (outside of specialized use cases) largely through VS Code's support for remote development features.
This is most likely just beginning of how VS Code will leverage its position to shape the future of programming.
VS Code is not just mildly popular, it's significantly more than twice as popular as any text editor has ever been in the modern era.
Source, it's currently used by 74% of programmers (https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-most-popula...), the next highest text editor, since the survey started in 2015, was Sublime Text in its prime (2016) at 31%.
It's fair to call VS Code's popularity unprecedented and historic. And it's already being used to shape the future of the industry. E.g., we're watching the decline of local development right now (outside of specialized use cases) largely through VS Code's support for remote development features.
This is most likely just beginning of how VS Code will leverage its position to shape the future of programming.