VS Code is slowly becoming an operating system, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing

VS Code has evolved far beyond a text editor into a full development platform with its own file system APIs, remote development capabilities, UI framework, and AI tooling. While this consolidation reduces friction and unifies workflows, it introduces risks: extensions run with full VS Code permissions, Microsoft controls the marketplace and licensing, and the ecosystem is far more centralized than historical alternatives like Vim or Emacs. The author questions whether this level of platform consolidation is healthy for the developer ecosystem.