I had the impression VSCode had the technical superior plugin system and I found it much more performant.
Atom had more plugins for some time, but they had mediocre quality.
Atom had more plugins for some time, but they had mediocre quality.
From my very limited exposure to VSCode's plugins, it seems they are a lot more limited in how they can change the editor's behavior compared to elisp code in Emacs[1]; if Atom plugins are similarly flexible, then I'm not sure you can say it's (strictly) technically superior if you can only implement a small subset of what you can do in competitor's system. At most it's better at some tasks and worse at others if this is the case.
[1] I didn't say "Emacs plugins" since there is no distinction between user-written elisp code and core editor elisp code and you don't need to create any plugin project or such, which I think makes for a much more organic and pleasant customization experience.
As far as I know, the VSCode plugins run in their own process, which makes the editor much more responsive when it loaded many plugins.
I agree that restricting what plugins can do can lead to better stability and speed at the expense of extensibility.
You lose flexibility, you gain stability, discoverability, speed, etc.
Sincere question: Does "more performant" simply mean "faster"?
I meant, I found it much more responsive.