Disclaimer: I am the engineering manager for the jupyter support supplied in the Python extension.

I LOVE this feedback! Keep it coming (though entering issues https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-python would be ideal)

Yes, as conner4312 VS Code is investigating how to better incorporate a juypter notebook experience within it, natively. As has been pointed out here, there are a number of limitations that the python extension notebook support has run into. We have been working closely with the VS Code team to find solutions to these limitations. The custom editor work (https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/77131) is one such mechanism. We plan on rolling out our use of that work soon after it is officially released (sometime in February). However, this will not address all of the problems mentioned in this thread. Those issues will be addressed as native jupyter support arrives in VS Code.

Here's some additional info:
- Find/replace. (Personally, this drove me NUTS! Just ask my team! :) ) That being said a simple find (ctrl-f) is avaiable in the current official release. Unfortunately, it does not include replace. While we recognize that this is a severe limitation for some, implementing a full find and replace solution would end up requiring the extension to duplicate most of the functionality provided by VS Code itself. Therefore, we currently planning to piggy back off of that work when it becomes available. If that winds up taking an inordinate amount of time, we will consider further stop gap work.

- The markdown loss issue has been addressed and will be in the February release.

- For the language server problem discussed above, we need more info. I would encourage you to enter a new issue at https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-python. In the meantime, there are known related issues that will be fixed the Feb release. One in particular, was caused by the backend jupyter server inexplicably taking a long time to return us a full completion list. So when you don't see completion pop up, it may not be that it's broken, it may just be taking a long time. We are working around this issue for the February release. Also, if you're having docstring issues, you may find that turning off the python jedi language service in settings will help.

- Plots view. Yes, it is limited and honestly can cause rendering slowdowns. We are working through ways of addressing both problems. A good solution for supporting "proper" zoom will require adding ipywidget support overall, which is coming soon.

- "Smart environment stuff". I'm not following completely. Is this a general python extension issue or does it have to do with the jupyter kernel selection support we have for notebooks? Again, feel free to enter additional details at: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-python

- Supporting global editor extensions like "VI mode", isn't something that we can support without help from VS Code itself. One of the main reason's VS Code is pursuing native notebook support is to be able to handle issues exactly like this.

- Saving the notebook weirdness will be addressed in the February release. We were waiting for the custom editor support I referred to above to arrive.

Hope this is useful information!