That would explain a lot of the design in VS code, which seems to take all those suggestions by heart.

It's of course horrible.

Indeed. “No modals” has been a rallying cry since Larry Tesler and the Macintosh, but I haven’t seen a useful dissection of the problems with the other extreme.

As you point out, VSCode in particular is loaded with ever-changing user feedback and prompting, spread throughout the interface with no rhyme or reason as to how attention should be distributed.

	▲	xg15 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The irony is that VS Code also frequently replaces traditional modal dialogs with "pseudo modal" command palette flows, where you can click outside the palette alright - it will just kick you out of the flow so you will have to do everything again. I honestly don't understand what's the problem with modals is in the first place. Most "issues" listed on that page are either subjective or could be argued against.