[john-aj]

Exactly. I'd guess that a majority of VS Code users are relatively new to programming. Not to say that there aren't experienced people who have switched, especially among the TextMate/Sublime Text crowd, but the incredible growth in users? I think that's largely a result of new programmers choosing the same editor, not old programmers switching.

[flohofwoe]

Don't know if I'm representative, but I've been using Visual Studio for C++ stuff for about 20 years and switched to "mostly VSCode" a few years ago. I guess the reason is that I never used more than 2..3% of Visual Studio's features. Some features in VSCode are a bit too bare bones (especially the debugger), but somehow the user interface makes a lot more sense to me, and most of the times it feels faster and more lightweight than Visual Studio (Visual Studio nowadays even shows a progress bar when loading a project).

[noobermin]

Is that that much of a shift? VSCode probably isn't Visual Studio but isn't it related obviously. It would seem different if you migrated from Visual Studio to sublime or xcode or something.

[meheleventyone]

There’s also a big swing of experienced people as well IME. This is partly what drives adoption by new people. There’s a connection there.