For folks that already use vscode, the selling point is being able to continue to use vscode for everything, code and markdown. VSCode has an editor experience that is hard to beat
(also, disclaimer: I'm the author of the article and founder of Dendron)
> VSCode has an editor experience that is hard to beat
VS Code is a text-editor focused on coding. Obsidian is a markdown-editor focused on knowledge- and self-management. They are each hard to beat in their own specialty. For example, the WYSIWYG-Editor of obsidian is not something that VS Codes raw text-view can beat, especially if you combine it with add-ons for code-blocks.
The WYSIWYG part of obsidian can be somewhat replicated in VSCode by this obscure and community-neglected plugin [1]. Live math preview was the reason why I got this plugin, which works very unreliably, but for other markdown functions it's okay.
One missing component (last I heard) to the Obsidian story: there's no web app. With Dendron and others, you can use code-server to use VS Code in a browser. It's a better workflow for ChromeOS, iPad nomads, Wayland users.
Since your knowledge base in obsidian is simply a folder filled with markdown files, it’s quite quick and fairly painless to run say mkdocs or similar which serves up all the markdown as a nicely formatted website.
- Zoom: Work on part of a bullet list structure in isolation, with a breadcrumb line at the top to jump to a different parent level
- Copy button for code blocks
- Auto backup with Git
- Outliner: Vertical indentation lines for bullet lists, and hotkeys to move list items about in the structure
- Recent files: List of files, ordered by most recently opened
- Vimrc support
Not a plugin, but I tried to make a cheatsheet of the supported Prism language types that I'm likely to use. They can be specified in the code fences (```) so that the code and config blocks in my markdown notes look prettier : https://prismjs.com/#supported-languages
