FWIW I was a very long time premium Evernote user, and switched to Joplin at the start of this year, after experimenting with both Notebooks App and Joplin.
In my view Joplin is not just in the same class as, but already better than, Evernote - at least for my purposes.
- It allows for an infinite hierarchy of notebooks whereas Evernote restricts you to one level of notebooks which can be arranged in 'stacks'.
- Joplin's use of markdown is rock solid in the way it presents notes. Evernote's EML is regularly flaky in the way it screws up formatting.
- Evernote's export feature flattens all notebooks and stacks and gives you an unusable set of uncategorised notes. Joplin's JEX format retains all the metadata and folder/notebook structure, ready for re-importing.
- Joplin's web clipper is infinitely better than Evernote's in its ability to save a simplified version of a web page with logical markdown formatting.
- Joplin allows me to directly edit the markdown in any note, making the process of fixing something easy and straight forward. Evernote does not give you any direct access to EML.
I teach online media. I use VS Code for my coding work. I use Joplin for my academic work. I use it as a way of archiving and categorising material I will need later. It has about 4000 notes at the moment. I do not need the two applications to start merging.
Having said that I am aware that VS Code can be used for anything if you are willing to bend it to fit. I use Scrivener for my writing. Here is a post that describes how VS Code is much better software for writing novels and academic papers than Scrivener. As I say you can use VS Code for anything if you have a mind to