I'd credit Sublime Text with that.

I second that, Sublime raised the bar and set the new standard, the only advantage VScode now has over sublime is it's open source license.

VS Code is not really open source.

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4288/is-micro...

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_why-does-...

Though you can just use Codium or the OSS version if you don't need remote magic.

Or the vast amount of plugins and community support. Using atom over vscode hasn’t really made sense for a few years now , and I loved atom

... and the fact that I don't have to pay for it. Never understood why anyone would spend money on a text editor.

It's a tool most of us use for many thousands of hours a year. Buying a better one, even if it was only a bit easier to use, or a bit faster, makes a lot of sense.

Also, many developers (not all) make a lot of money. Even Sublime's steep 60 bucks, which when I discovered Sublime as a student was crazy to me, is reasonable when compared to our salaries.

I don't think anyone would be surprised if a woodworker said "Yeah my drill works fine but I'm going to spend 60 bucks on a slighly better one; I use it a lot and mine's ergonomics aren't great."

TextMate might have a word here.

Yes.

Few of my friends were using Macs and used TextMate. That was years before Sublime was even released.

To me it Sublime was a fast, but clunky alternative to TextMate that ran on PC.

Then came Atom, Brackets, and finally VSCode.