I’m well familiar with EEE, I’ve used Linux off and on for something like 20 years, back when Microsoft really was the boogeyman. I don’t think VS code qualifies for this category since it was originally (ish, has roots in Atom I think) open source and Microsoft. It was never embraced/extended, and extinguishing their own product makes no sense. (btw I don’t even use VS Code, shit vim plugins in my experience, jetbrains all the way)
WSL IMO is a concession on Microsoft’s part, because most dev tools nowadays are being made primarily with Linux in mind. It’s what makes Windows at all usable as a development platform in many situations. And pretty much nothing developed specifically for WSL. All WSL has on a normal Linux distro is integration with the host system AFAIK.
Given your background it should come to no surprise that it doesn’t really matter much.
That said, I recommend Arch with some caveats, mainly with regards to the “very little effort to start using” requirement. If you know how to follow instructions, it should only be about 30-45 minutes to install it. It will on the other hand fit your other requirements of good defaults and not shipping with loads of applications. When you install an app you will get that app and nothing else, and the defaults will either be exactly what the upstream defaults would be if you built it yourself or something very close to that. You also have everything available through the AUR, and after using it for years I’ve yet to run into an update not going smoothly.