> was never really quite able to get the [VS Code] interface the same way

You're at least the 3rd person I've seen make that observation in this thread. I don't get how VS Code made this so hard, isn't it fundamentally built on a fork of Atom's core? The CSS and JS customization seemed more capable and accessible in Atom somehow.

I've heard only good things about the Sublime Text UX for literally a decade or more, but is it "hackable" in the way that Atom and VS Code are? Emacs-like hack-ability with less esoteric scripting (and a better UX out-of-the-box) is exactly what attracted me to Atom in the first place.