It indeed isn't. Some Emacs packages use that approach, and others are well-known to employ Unix utilities to do the legwork. Maven and Gradle both have daemon

It indeed isn't. Some Emacs packages use that approach, and others are well-known to employ Unix utilities to do the legwork. Maven and Gradle both have daemon modes. Unfortunately, all these integrations are custom, so there is no chance for it to take off. Ycmd is also worth mentioning. What really made the difference is that VS Code uses LSP to integrate languages. Instead of dozens of ad-hoc integrations, there is one unified way to integrate a language now, and Microsoft's backing ensured there is an ecosystem for it from day one. Not all is rosy though, mind you. LSP uses JSON/RPC after all. Also, we are touching the Microsoft world here, which means that standard adherence is not necessarily a given[0]. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/b3yzq4/a_lsp_client_maintainers_view_of_the_lsp_protocol/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/b3yzq4/a_lsp_client_ma...