That's all just a matter of preference. I find modal editing far better, you don't, and that's fine. I'm not sure what you mean with "typing out entire command sequence words and patterns" though, if you type whole words in Vim to achieve something other than writing text you probably overlooked at least one quicker way to do the same thing, and if not you can just define a custom shortcut in seconds.

> vim will have you searching blog articles to find the right plugin manager and plugins to manually download and configure

Downloading a plugin manager is a matter of a single bash command and adding any other plugin afterwards doesn't require more than a single line in the configuration file and a single command. Sure, it's more than one or two clicks in an integrated browser, but I don't install new plugins for months at a time, I don't need my editor to optimise that step.

VS Code is definitely a great program, but to me it feels too slow and inflexible.

> There's absolutely no reason for modern programmers to learn vim.

Absolutely no reason except the potential risk of learning something one might like, or even worse, prefer ;) As a modern - or at least young - programmer, I can definitely say that I do not miss other editors and their "modern" paradigms and UI quirks.

There is though. And not only for programmers, I am not a coder and I use vim emulation in multiple applications every single day. I spent 15 years of my career thinking like you, then it clicked. Btw, one of the beauties of vim is that you don’t need to memorize the command sequences, only a dozen of “verbs” and text objects. Vim is not about extensions, it’s about the most natural way of editing and navigating texts. You simply tell it - scroll down two pages, remove this paragraph, change the text in parentheses, copy from here to the end of the next sentence. You don’t need to memorize commands, you simply interact with your editor in a natural language. That’s the power of vim, not the extensions.

> There's absolutely no reason for modern programmers to learn vim.

Vim keybindings helped save my wrists from imploding, and thus helped save my career.

Sweeping generalizations are rarely correct, let alone wise.