You weren’t kidding when you said it’s “very hidden”. It didn’t even occur to me that the greyed out “Community…” text was a search box. No borders, and the text formatting does not attract attention at all.
I think even a slightly contrasting background would / magnifying glass glyph would better indicate you can search there.
For Python, VS Code and Jupyter Lab. I used Sublime Text 3 previously but have found VS Code to be easier to set up and better supported over time. I do miss how fast and lightweight Sublime is this compared to VS Code though so I still use ST4 as a general text editor.
For Excel VBA (ugh), pretty much have to use the built in one as there doesn’t seem to be any alternative.