While I get the longevity argument (Vim and Emacs have a great track record), I've found that it is FOSS vs proprietary that causes beloved tech to die.
VSCode is, by a wide margin, now the most popular IDE. If MS abandons it, there's a fleet of us ready to continue using VSCodium.
Another consideration for you is that Vim is, by a huge margin, the most popular tool for doing difficult edits in an ultra light or restricted server environment. It's absolutely worth learning for that use case, which I keep being promised I won't need again, between each of the hundreds of times I've needed it.
Edit: The usual issue with plugins on VSCodium, out of the box, is that it defaults to a completely different plugin set, due to MS license rules about their plugin repository. It's trivial to switch it back with a config file edit, which is, admittedly, a little buried, in the project FAQ. The VSCodium plugin repository is growing better over time, but there's not good awareness of it yet by most plugin developers.
If you like VSCode, and want the longevity of FOSS, you can switch to https://vscodium.com/
It still leaves the option of using non-FOSS plugins, but makes it much more obvious which bits are FOSS or not. It is, otherwise, an identical experience with VSCode.
As a diehard Vim user, VSCodium with VSCodeVim is a terrific no-nonsense combination.
Edit: Regarding Vim plugin packs, I honestly only ever had a bad time with curated plugin collections. I don't think the default settings in Vim are that bad anymore, and are trivial to change as you go when something annoys you.
So ratherb than picking a plugin pack, I recommend spending some time in :vimtutor to learn about various quality of life settings, and then set them as you prefer in your .vimrc.
Edit 2:
Regarding the 'split' in Vim options, Vim is growing up into a protocol, rather than just an editor. As a 'trapped in Vim' user, back in the day, I'm delighted that essentially every serious editor now supports Vim keybindings*.
*Disclaimer: I will 'no true scottsman' all day long if someone names me a 'serious editor' without Vim keybindings. Let's all not go there, I'm too childish for that conversation.
One important thing you should know about Vim is that, VimScript, the native way to extend the original Vim, is an unholy abomination that is best left to rot in it's forgotten grave. It's the only reason I moved on to VSCodium, which can be extended with TypeScript, an unholy abomination that looks like it's going places.
When something that big barely turns a profit, I immediately suspect Hollywood accounting.
But if true, they made a game, covered their costs, left the company with an asset that can keep making sales, and probably developed their in-house talent and tooling along the way. That's a lot of points in the "win" column.
Wise leaders understand that, in business, victory means getting to try another project with the same team, next year. Failure means disolution of the business. Earn enough years and projects with the same team in a row, and maybe you take one of the big wins one of those years.
"The first rule of muppet club is we don't talk about muppet-what's that... Oh. Right.
The first rule of muppet club is we have ice cream on Tuesdays.
The second rule of muppet club is - we don't talk about muppet club.
The third rule of muppet club is we- really? That's new. No I'm not mad, I just think it reduces the impact. The third rule is we have sherbert on Thursdays.
What's the fourth rule? Pasta on Saturday? Really. Okay. But there is another rule about talking about muppet club right?"
It probably wouldn't work, but I would warn Martin Luther King's event organizers or security detail.
I'm old enough that I could have lived in a world where Martin Luthor King Jr was still an active activist in my lifetime. It's heartbreaking to think about what his loss meant not just symbolically, but in terms of how much better the entire world could have been with almost an extra half century of his influence.
I've given up huge piles of cash by choosing to not work for megacorps.
It's worth it to me.
Confronted with the likelihood that we cannot achieve climate goals.
The current trend line sucks, but we've seen plenty of times in history what the ultra rich ignoring the plight of everyone else looks like. Someone please pass the "not with them" list to me to sign when it's time to chop their heads off.
I wish I was joking, but I'm not. Seriously. I'm not with them. I would like to keep my head while we adjust course abruptly.
Edit: To be clear, I am not advocating. What should happen is that our climate, inequality, and injustice trends get fixed through peaceful cooperation. But our current crop of billionaires don't show a lot of sign of either wanting that, or having any real awareness of where their current path, historically, goes. Which wouldn't really be material to me, other than beacuse I'm at risk both from the climate, and from how guillotines historically kill a lot of bystanders.
This is terrific. Thank you for starting this discussion.
I don't think we can or should wait for individual users to make these decisions. Server admins are the ones who understand the risks and so should make this call. Guidance for server admins based on past experience (cough XMPP!) should be quite welcome.
I might refine the bit about altered API versions to really focus on the real problem: proprietary extensions. We probably want to leave the door open to try out additions to the spec that come with detailed RFCs.
But we know from XMPP that proprietary extensions are a huge problem.
"When we decided to give the test to the development team (about 15 developers) — most of them got scores that were lower than our threshold (45%), despite them all being rock-solid developers. Also, there were some candidates who managed to get 95% and above — but would then just be absolutely awful during the interview — we would later discover that they were paying someone to complete the technical test on their behalf.
There is no substitute for taking the time to sit down and talk to someone."
"And then, one day, there weren't any more rabbits to eat, so..."