these command-line editors with a million commands for different edge-cases

Have you ever actually tried vim? You use the keyboard to move around and search for terms. You don't actually need to learn much.

Why not just use VSCode?

Because it's a bloated electron program that takes huge resources to edit text.

To me the kinds of people using these editors are the kinds of people that love making everything more complex to seem smart.

Seems like insecurity if you've never learned it yourself.