There was quite a debate on wether it should inherit prog-mode here, maybe the fact that it does not is the cause of what you describe ?

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2023-02/msg01009.html

This is the way, for basic IDE features it should be enough.

Treemacs is also useful if you are used to having a left menu to navigate your project files with the mouse like in most IDE

Anything more is about personal preference an customizing your emacs experience.

In this regard, installing a color theme could help you feel at home, for example this one is a dark mode reusing vs code’s colors : https://github.com/ianyepan/vscode-dark-plus-emacs-theme

Start with vanilla emacs, watch and follow system cafter’s “emacs from scratch series”