I'm guessing the user you're replying to is meaning that the vscode default config file is 11k lines and the AI setting just one of many lines in the file.
I don't think they meant that their own settings are that long, just the default in the app and they're commenting that it's ridiculous to expect a person to find it there.
I use emacs, so maybe they're better trained on my editor. But I've had a lot of success resolving little annoyances I have just lived with for years talking to Claude in gptel.
I can't get it to do real work for shit, but it's A+ at helping me waste time with yak-shaving. lol
Alternatively, use the single setting that was literally just given to you above. That is pretty much as easy as it gets without resurrecting Clippy to help you figure it out. It's not reasonable to expect a massive bloated gui if people have 10k+ settings they are using.
The problem is that they keep adding new ai "features" all under different names and different settings, then shuffling the settings around.
Having a "master switch" doesn't matter, since their standard operating procedure is to waffle-stomp more "features" into vscode every month that will fall under a different setting and then they'll continue to shuffle them around.
Their indifference towards their own user-hostility with regards to this is the main problem.
I'm confused—how does putting in a master switch for those who want to opt-out entirely from the AI revolution occurring at the moment not matter? Are you saying that new features will fail to respect it?
That, in a nutshell, is one of my biggest complaints about VS Code: there are many overlapping settings for various things, and I could never get clarity on what takes priority. Setting up things like formatters (and their settings) for various file types was a nightmare; between VS Code complaining I didn't have one set up (I did), the settings seemingly being ignored, and various other issues, I break into a cold sweat whenever I have to edit my settings file.
But more to the point, I don't understand why one would ever have to edit the file directly when there's already a settings panel that lets you search for a setting using natural language, and get back a list of matching settings. Why doesn't VS Code let you make all the changes from the settings panel, without having to mess with JSON directly?
You should really look in to the difference between opt-in and opt-out. Opt-in respects the user; opt-out is for foisting features that the user might not need or want.
The anti-AI folks should just fork everything at this point, because it's hypocritical as hell to complain about it and use a bunch of stuff built with it. Then you can opt out of society!
I'd say the percentage of stuff developed using AI now is higher than the percentage of pro athletes who use performance enhancing drugs, and there's almost as much incentive to mask it and say "made without AI"
Oh, I use coding assistants every day, just not the one that came with VSCode. Because I want to decide if/which coding assistant I want to use, not whatever VSCode forces upon me. In fact, at many companies, GitHub Copilot is explicitly forbidden.
Not the smartest argument to brand this as anti-AI.
I really like the Copilot autocomplete across multiple symbols in the file (e.g. predictive edits that you can tab through).
For most other stuff I prefer Cline/RooCode/KiloCode, but sadly it doesn’t seem like any of those offer similar autocomplete (Continue.dev did with even Ollama support for local models but the whole plugin was a buggy mess and it didn’t work well). Oh and sometimes Claude Code or Codex is nice in a terminal directly.
Personally, I don’t mind something being there by default (same as how JetBrains has their pre installed plugin and also something like Junie available), as long as it’s easy to turn off or uninstall.
Similar to how I wouldn’t scoff at a Git integration plugin even if I prefer to use Sourcetree or GitKraken.
In my experience it’s people with “agents” mass editing their code, in their 10th attempt to convince their tool to do what they want it do, are people with a disrupted workflow, in a constant struggle with their tools.
(Of course, I know that's never going to happen.)