You have to define ‘worse’ because raw performance isn’t really everything and vscode’s popularity proves it.

Feature set and extensibility have clearly won here. At a certain performance point, it’s good enough and what you can do with it matters more.

I’m not sure you could achieve the sane flexibility in a more native, “bare-metal”, development environment. Possible, yes, but it would probably not be as successful as developing for it would be somewhat harder.

Vscode is “fast” enough. Its extensibility and its ecosystem are what makes it so popular and successful.

I’m not sure you can build the same without trade offs.