Might be kinda hard to support that, as many of the plugins are just leveraging JS engine that VSCode runs on... but I don't see why it couldn't be possible considering things like Tauri exists.

I stand on the same kind of stance... I agree. I am not a fan of the company, and I am not a fan of the way they do business. I am unsure if I will like what they try to do in this space, but I think blocking them outright would be a considerable disservice before giving it a chance. I think having a big player in the ring, people will give it more of a chance than they have in the past with the complaints of "It just seemed too complicated" or "I don't understand the concept of servers" It will be a good gateway for people to try the platform with "An Evil You Know" mindset.

Do I think it could eventually turn into Embrace Extend Extinguish... maybe, but I think it is still worth it to get more people into giving it a shot. Just look at the at protocol that people are playing with; tons of users are so excited about how they can use their own domain and such... when they see you from a different instance and actually see it working. It might drive a percentage to move off the Meta-operated instance and onto instances operated by individuals or even try to host their own instance.

My first language was PHP

That will be awesome

This almost tempts me to move back to it, but I still been enjoying the ability to live in the world of Static Site Generation.