People are following the "hype train" because VSCode is actually a much better and polished editor than Sublime text. Even people who absolutely detested Microsoft have grown a liking for VSCode.

Performance difference used to be palpable 1-2 years ago, not so much now. VSCode is on par with Sublime text in terms of speed(at least for me). I still have Sublime text open all the time for quick note taking, recursive searching etc. but for any coding work, VSCode seems way more polished and gives a better development experience.