And I would rather say that Atom was an engineering feat in terms of that they developed Electron and tree-sitter.
One also has to take into account that Atom started long before VS Code so for sure the VS Code team could make much more informed decisions and learn from the "failures" of Atom. And things like TypeScript wasn't around when Atom started.
Admittedly this is a little bit of a nitpick (and I agree with your general sentiment re: VSCode devs benefitting from prior art) but for clarity's sake — Atom v1.0.0 was released mid-2015. TypeScript v1.0 was early 2014 and had been usable since 2012 pre 1.0.
They were very much contemporaries of one another, though obviously TS popularity has surged since 2017/2018.
Also, the Monaco code editor (a core component of VS Code) was started for the Azure Portal and then used by the IE Dev Tools experience for several years before Atom. VS Code didn't have Electron until after Atom, but they had a running start in several core component areas.
And I would rather say that Atom was an engineering feat in terms of that they developed Electron and tree-sitter.
One also has to take into account that Atom started long before VS Code so for sure the VS Code team could make much more informed decisions and learn from the "failures" of Atom. And things like TypeScript wasn't around when Atom started.