If you really want speed, you’ll want the neovim extension. This replaces VSCode in many ways, making it neovim under the hood…which means no waiting for VSCode to figure out what’s going on in your giant codebase, no wondering why it takes literally a full half-second sometimes before the characters you just typed pop onto the screen. But it’s still VSCode “on top,” so you can tap into the other features you might want when you want them.

Full disclosure: it’s been years since I used it, but I was super impressed