@celesteh You could try VSCodium or some other libre VSCode derivative. They remove the spyware. For legal reasons they can't configure the regular Marketplace out of the box,but you can manually enable it. I remember there are some AUR packages that can do it for you. Or you could manually install the extensions you need. However you would still depend on Microsoft for the features it has.

That said, what features are you looking for, what languages? Depending on that there could be better editors. As a side note, for JS and front end development I think VSCode might be the most advanced editor.