What is the long term value to Microsoft for VS Code? A strategic tool for a strategic group (to MS's future): developers. It's not a very big team, so even a

What is the long term value to Microsoft for VS Code? A strategic tool for a strategic group (to MS's future): developers. It's not a very big team, so even a total failure would be capped at a fairly small downside, but the upside of capturing significant loyalty is not capped. "Loyalty" here is to VSCode, not to Microsoft, but if MS controls a tool that large numbers of developers are committed to, it can make sure that a large number of developers have an easy, reliable way to use technologies MS wants to push. I'm not saying that MS would capture developers and then force them to use MS technologies. That would kill the goose laying the golden eggs. They can just build their own extensions that work extremely well and make any necessary changes to the base product and extension system to support the extensions so that developers have an easy and reliable way to adopt new MS technologies on all platforms, not just Windows. This might not end up being of great practical value to them or it could turn out to be huge at some point in the future. Limited downside, unlimited potential upside. It's a speculative bet, but apparently they think it's worth trying.