Complex sentence: Prior to the design and implementation of the Language Server Protocol for the development of Visual Studio Code, most language services were generally tied to a given IDE or other editor and were typically implemented by utilizing a tool-specific extension API.
Split into simpler sentences: Prior to the design and implementation of the Language Server Protocol for the development of Visual Studio Code, most language services were generally tied to a given IDE or other editor. In the absence of the Language Server Protocol, language services are typically implemented by utilizing a tool-specific extension API.