I used to like VS Code, but something about it changed and it does not feel as snappy as it once did for me. Now I prefer Zed.

Electron apps are seldom snappy, we use it, because some plugins aren't available anywhere else.

I mostly agree, that said, after VS Code starts, it runs pretty well. I almost didn't try it after Brackets and Atom as they were really slow. I haven't tried zed, so can't speak to it. VS Code was really just the first editor that I used with an integrated terminal and the directory tree. Just those two features made it a great fit for my workflow. I'm able to use the CLI to run/debug without leaving the editor, and/or run git commands from the terminal as well.

Because it runs a bunch of background processes in C++, Rust, and does text rendering via WebGL.

Programmer editors with such capabilities are decades old.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brief_(text_editor)

I know they use a lot of background processes to get the performance, the point is it works pretty well.

As to the second, I'm unaware of a gui editor with a built in interactive terminal prior to VS Code.

Atom, sublime, visual studio, eclipse, probably every single jetbrains editor…..

I guess with Sublime it's in the "TerminalView" package that works for mac and linux, but not Windows that I have to use for work, and was using when I switched.

Atom is slow AF, and I hated using it (same for Brackets). AFAIK, it's using the same terminal code as VS Code.

I haven't seen an integrated terminal prompt in Visual Studio (not code), you get an interactive command window, and misc output windows though.

Eclipse, hadn't seen an interactive terminal there... I guess it's another 3rd party plugin of some kind?