One more reason not to support Google I guess. I don't understand the appeal of VS code anyway - its nothing but a slow Electron thing. Notepad++ and Sublime blow it out of the water.
The debug integrations in VS Code were what hooked me. Very clean, extensible, and they work. It's certainly what won me over compared to Atom.
Vim/nano/emacs can certainly pull out power, but grokking them on as deep a level as sublime/atom/vscode requires a steep curve (and is complementary anyway).
Something full like VS is too heavy for me personally. I rarely use 80% of the features, and the ones I do want tend to be more complex in the more powerful IDEs when maybe I only need some simple version.
I can certainly imagine a different working environment where I would find the IDE tooling much more valuable, but it's not what I work on now.
VS code being a worse IDE is, for me, a feature.
The simplest response with a similar level of effort is - I disagree with you and find VS Code to be an effective IDE.
I cannot see being productive in Notepad++ as I am with Code.
I cannot say that VS Code is slow. Yes, for quick viewing random files, I prefer to open in Notepad++ which is already opened and opens new files instantly. VS Code I prefer for projects, but sometimes ad-hoc files too.
Don't know about Sublime (haven't used it), but comparing VS Code to Notepad++ is comparing apples to oranges. We eat both, but we don't substitute one with another.