Why Cursor is not an extension
Visual Studio Code is reshaping the development landscape by creating a divide between its proprietary version and open-source alternatives, pushing users towards Microsoft services while complicating the ecosystem for developers
Geoffrey Huntley, in his blog on Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture:
I used to think GitHub Codespaces would help popularise Gitpod but now realize it is the other way around. Gitpod is currently permitted to exist in the Visual Studio Code ecosystem to popularise GitHub Codespaces, and Microsoft can step in at any moment to create legal crises that strategically divide the market from a business perspective because like Apple and their AppStore: it is their ecosystem that they control and they are in absolute control.
This is the reason Cursor is not an extensions or why Anthropic released Claude Code instead of a VSCode extension: You make all the work but you have no control.
The Microsoft version of being Sherlocked.