VS Code has many pleasant properties, but its lack of respect for user freedom is a real turn off. Also it is considerably less conveniently extensible than Emacs. That however is definitely a double edged sword and there are valid reasons to go with a less customizable tool.

I would guess there's about 1000x as many people who are capable with javascript as there are who are capable with elisp though.

... that could be a feature, depending on the person, I guess.

It’s not so much the particular extension language as it is the design philosophy. JavaScript is considerably lispier than most squiggly brace languages.

I find the Electron based GUI of VSC to be laggy compared to other GUI editors like Sublime Text.

It's subtle, but there is a noticeable lag when clicking on a file and the view refreshing in VSC that isnt there in Sublime Text, for instance.