I can’t imagine the argument that vscode’s level of complexity is even in the same order of magnitude as vim or eMacs though. A 2 minute tutorial or half an hour or fiddling will get you sorted with vscode, I needed a full ebook for neovim.
Yet, extending just about any functionality of Emacs for an experienced user is far simpler than in anything else - you can write some expressions in a scratch buffer and change the behavior of any command - built-in or third-party. Not only wouldn't you even have to restart anything - you wouldn't even need to save that code on the file system.
There's a strong correlation between perceived difficulty at the beginning and notable simplicity at later stages. Things that are seemingly harder to grok often open up avenues for clarity later. Conversely, things that seem easy to get into, later often become full of bottlenecks and complexity.
Imagine attempting to replace all the knobs, controls, buttons and switches in an Airbus A380 cockpit with a single touch-based display à la Tesla and claim it's now easier to train new pilots, but you've just made them dependent on a system they don't deeply understand, you've traded 6 months of training for a lifetime of brittle expertise.
I am forever indebted to my younger self for investing some time in understanding the grand ideas behind Vim and Emacs, and never, even once, have I regretted my choices. Rather the opposite - I regret wasting a big chunk of my life chasing popular trends aimed at "intuitive use", "easy start" and "it just works™". I would have never developed the true "hacker's mindset" without them.
Undeniably, there's an immense pedagogical value in tools that make it easy for beginners, but there's also a mental trap there. It's ingrained into human nature - the brain simply doesn't like the grit; it naturally gravitates toward comfort and minimal effort - it just wants to remain lazy. Yet there's a compounding effect of initial investment that pays off later. Sadly, we keep trying to find ways to dumb things down.