[skohan]

Telemetry is also not the only solution to the problem of improving a product. For something like a code editor, I cannot imagine what they can learn from telemetry that the cannot also learn from methods like user interviews.

[simplyinfinity]

User interviews are slow, unreliable compared to millions of devs submitting telemetry, and take a significant effort on both sides to conduct. Telemetry can alert of bugs, crashes, incompatibilities on certain platforms, hardware & software. You can see which extensions are most used, how often the settings are changed, which ones are most often changed, for example:

how many % of the devs change their font? To which one do they change it? can we change the default to that if say.. 80% of the devs prefer it to the other default.

They can also run a/b tests testing new features and gather info without having to poll thousands of devs about it.

[skohan]

Do you really think font choice is worth spying on all your users?

[dvngnt_]

user interviews are as only as useful as your questions. telemetry gives a more honest look in how the application is actually used.

i would prefer access to both information