A lot of people don't realize that you can completely change the vscode UI. All the side bars in particular - just get rid of them. You're left with a blank screen on which syntax-highlighted code appears with LSP and either the command palette or if you want to be more vim/emacs-y then basically every operation is key-bindable.

I assume that on subsequent runs, it's less offensive, but every time I start a blank VSCode setup, I find myself repulsed by a series of pop-ups, persistent tooltips, extra tabs, etc., that are at best uninteresting and unwarranted. It definitely has strong Windows-y my-computing-environment-is-an-obstacle-course vibe.

I think if you can't be bothered to configure a text editor then the genre isn't really for you.

That's funny I always considered Sublime to be more in my face, begging for money every time I opened it.

There's a neat trick to remove the nag screen

That’s one purchase I never regretted. Sublime was so perfect before writing code got tipped upside down

Yeah installing vscode, quite the neat trick indeed.