[rodw]

> 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.

[lozenge]

Atom extensions are like script tags added to the page, while VS Code runs all extensions in a single separate process and gives them a limited API.

That means that in VS Code actions like "right click to open context menu" or "type in Command Palette to filter commands" are instantaneous regardless of your extensions, as no extension code gets run. But extensions can't change the layout of the editor, or really do anything not exposed by the API.

If you want hack-ability there is an extension - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=betterth...

[ben-schaaf]

> 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?

The vast majority of the UI uses a custom GUI toolkit and doesn't have any API, though you can theme it. There's a few things that are extensible in limited ways: the command palette, text phantoms, input boxes, html sheets, etc. So no it's not generally hackable.

[oldgradstudent]

> isn't it fundamentally built on a fork of Atom's core?

No. AFAIK the only thing common to them is Electron.