Some say Atom and VSCode also have plugins. That's true, but can you write code to extend some VSCode functionality in a minute?
You just go to the scratch buffer, write some code, evalute it and it instantly becomes part of the editor. I don't know if there are other editors which can replicate this experience.
That said, VS Code isn’t as flexible—there’s a distinction between building VS Code and building an extension, and the two aren’t equivalent. The closest analogy I can think of is developing an old-fashioned XUL Firefox extension vs a new Chrome-style extension. The former used the same building blocks the app used, the latter was intentionally sandboxed and sanitized.
That said, you can do a heck of a lot with VS Code extensions, enough that I don’t want to install any I don’t trust —they can run programs and never prompt you for permissions, etc. So with great power comes great responsibility ;-)
And it could be argued that in a perfect world, VS Code should have both a live-edit-and-reload experience for plugin development alongside a more formal, sandboxed approach with signing and permissions and everything.
Doesn't Emacs have the same issue - you really really have to trust any package you install?
That's irrelevant: what matters is the value of an attack vector. e.g. Bill Gates is a small attack vector.
Attack the high value of some developers assets, or attack the high value of some of the businesses they work for.
Because it's lisp you can inspect just about everything. See an unfamiliar symbol? Put your cursor on it and press M-.
0: launch help from within Emacs
- https://nullprogram.com/blog/2014/01/04/