[TriEmbed] Visual Studio Code question

[Pete Soper]

The following is not meant to be criticism of VS Code or Particle or 
Microsoft, just information about their tool chain in its current state 
and the corner cases I seem to be unlucky enough to flush out.

Poking around docs and I can't seem to find the answer to this 
question:  How to disable the VS Code editor and tell it I'm using an 
external editor? I realize VS Code is a code editor and this question 
may be another in a long  line of benchmarks for heresy.  I don't seem 
to be able to avoid heresy.

This feature is straight forward with the Arduino IDE and I'm hoping 
it's present in VS Code to help me escape from the hopeless confused 
state Code (or Particle Workbench?) gets into with mutated files. I'm 
seeing a state where it decides I shouldn't really be using vim and so I 
can't edit the source from inside Code or outside and have it reflected  
sanely in the next build. If I could just find the right button in 
files/prefs/settings/Text Editor or the right json entry or something. 
But my deeper issue is that even "clean" operations with Particle 
workbench don't keep Code from seeing the wrong source files in some 
cases. The fact that it doesn't see a clear dependency between .ino and 
generated .cpp file (i.e. mutating the former should force recreation of 
the latter. And how is it possible a clean doesn't remove the .cpp??? D 
U H) All this tells me I need Maxwell's silver hammer. So far I've tried 
particle clean local, manual deletion of the .cpp, reset intellisense 
database, and reset editor history. Some combination of these has 
rescued me but what I really need is a way to say "I'll handle the 
source mutations myself" so I can more easily edit a bunch of files at 
once and just use Code for the build and debug sessions for where I'm at 
with this stuff. Can you tell I still haven't adapted to graphical 
interfaces? But I will get my mind right with VS Code, I'm just in a 
hurry at the moment.

Also, if there is anybody on the list with experience using the Particle 
JTAG debugger with an Argon  using Particle Workbench I'd love to get 
some of your consulting time for a faster bootstrap and am happy to pay 
for it.

Thanks,
Pete

PS This is what it is: my opinion. I love VS Code and don't despise or 
hate Microsoft anymore. That started when the kid named Bill was kissing 
MITS' ass and moving down the street from them while gloating about his 
shitty BASIC implementation and then making his customers his unwitting 
alpha and beta testers for decades and duping and screwing this and that 
biz partner. I used to have visions of latter day incendiary barrel 
bombs dropping on Redmond after getting the campus evacuated to burn all 
the source code and stop the torture of Windows users. But their attempt 
to embrace and extend open source is going to enable any hidden 
imperialist plans  to find the same sort of fate as US biz _____ enjoyed 
with their attempt at a conquest of China. I wonder if Paul or somebody 
else wrote that BASIC? I don't know but don't really care that much. 
Yes, I am an ambulatory fossil, but one who knows something about system 
software and the difference between juvenile hobby code and commercial 
code that respects accumulated wisdom.