That's exactly how it feels: a more modern and more powerful notepad++, with lots of syntax support and easier to add new languages (even better than code in my opinion). Code seems to try and be an ide for everything, but if I'm doing a complex project, I'll be getting a specific ide, for everything else a good text editor and a Makefil is all I need
Well there's also a plugin for Code, which is an open sourced fork of VS Code without the Microsoft association. Unfortunately a lot of the cool plugins that make VS Code so great are missing from Code.
I think you mean Codium/VSCodium? Some of the extensions can be downloaded from the ms page and then loaded into it, but you are back at the moral questions that made you use the alternative.