Sublime's focused/minimalist UI is nice. VS Code sometimes feels like it tries to do too much.
My ideal editor would probably be something like a variation on Sublime Text that's modeled more closely after TextMate while keeping the bits that make Sublime better (like the command palette).
Sublime is the better Textmate. What would you do to subl to make it more like mate? I used textmate for years and years before switching to ST and it was a drop-in replacement.
Not that this was necessarily better in terms of capabilities, but TextMate had a very pleasing Unix-style extension model where there was no mandated language and extension commands used scripts/executables written in any language. There was even a nice graphical editor for fine-tuning exactly what input they would be given and how their output would be acted upon.
TextMate was very much "Mac OS X UI sensibilities combined with Unix power", whereas ST pretty much has its own self-contained philosophy that's then brought to Mac/Windows/Linux in a slick way.
The two are pretty close, but between the two TextMate feels more like a golden era OS X desktop app thanks to several small differences and tiny Mac-isms, and I'd like Sublime to have that feel too.
I also feel TextMate had the nicer overall UX. When I first tried Sublime, TextMate had the better text rendering (IMO). Sublime has more features but still doesn’t feel as slick somehow.
I’ve recently returned to Sublime from VSC. I prefer VSC’s UI for following links to definitons/references, but in most other ways I prefer Sublime’s nimbleness.
My ideal editor would probably be something like a variation on Sublime Text that's modeled more closely after TextMate while keeping the bits that make Sublime better (like the command palette).