The difference between Visual Studio Code and Emacs is the difference between an extensible editor and an editor that is designed to be extended and modified as

The difference between Visual Studio Code and Emacs is the difference between an extensible editor and an editor that is designed to be extended and modified as you use it. It can take just a few lines of Emacs Lisp code to add a useful command. You can do it right in your editor, eval it in place, and save it if you like it. Extending VSCode consists of generating a skeleton with yeoman, adding the requisite methods to e.g. register the command in the command palette, testing with a special extension-testing instance of VSCode, then bundling and packaging the extension. Installing an extension locally takes invocation of a special command, what you're supposed to do is publish it to the VSCode extension marketplace.