This is good to know. As I say, I haven't tried codium, but I'm not surprised there are glitches.
I hear you wrt avoiding remote server, but for me, it begs the question of whether I want to learn more than one tool/editor? If I use vscode, I'd have to pull the files up and down, but if I use an alternative IDE, I can do it all in one step. If it's a good IDE then why do I want vscode in the first place?
A official sftp caching package might be enough to keep me in vscode (though I'm still not sure what I want to do).
I just find it bewildering that the IDE would so nonchalantly install sh!t on remote servers when you just want to edit a config. Any other tool where something is to get installed remotely makes it abundantly clear what's happening and it's a very conscious decision to do an install.
Not sure why people aren't up in arms about this approach. Unless I'm missing something (and I may well be).