My students next semester are going to each create a VS Code or Atom plug-in as their course project. I’ll definitely be showing them this!
How is this different to writing an Excel macro?
Python vs PHP vs JavaScript would be another matter. I would say it doesn't matter so much which of those you teach. Same with e.g. Java vs C# vs C++.
The question remains why build an Atom plugin over an Excel macro? And what underlying concepts would you hope to teach students by doing this? And is this the best way to introduce those concepts?
Why teach C++? Some students might not prefer that to C#.
My problem at school was always "how do I apply this lesson to an actual problem?" Picking _something_ (anything!) to teach is great (to me), because canny students can go off and use the lesson to do _anything_ else.
Between these two there is very little to choose in terms of concepts the students would be exposed to. I would assume that teaching either of those would aim to teach the underlying concepts of object orientated programming.
The questions that need to be asked instead are: What concepts would building an editor plugin expose students too? And is this the best way to introduce those concepts? (NB I am assuming University level where contact time for taught material is only really enough to introduce concepts not to really go into details.)
One class can't teach everything. If people have preferences in their tooling, then that's a great opportunity to generalize the lessons they are taught about VS Code.
https://github.com/brackets-userland/brackets-git/pull/1039
If people are wanting to contribute to OSS i highly recommend finding plugins in your favourite editor to contribute to.
I hope it isn't for a CS class. They should be learning principles rather than creating toy plug-ins which is something anyone can do for a hobby if they wanted.
But I would agree that if someone uses something else like vim or emacs as their primary editor, they should have the option of writing a plugin for their editor of choice. (As long as they accept that the rest of the class will be taught how to write Atom/VS Code extensions and they'll have to do most of the learning on their own.)