I think this might be only superficially true. One of the meta-features of vim/emacs is, over months and years of use, they slowly teach you how IDEs "work", and invite you to tweak how yours works to your whim.
example: I notice a process is slow in vim. I'm able to profile the problem, identify the binary responsible, replace it with a faster equivalent program, and enjoy that improvement for the rest of my life. Such a thing may be possible in VS Code, but it's against the norm of "just install this plugin", whereas it is the norm in vim/emacs-world.
Some other scattered ideas:
I also think that, since vim and emacs are fundamentally cli tools also gives them an advantage, because you can hook them in to your terminal workflows (git add -p, git commit -v, etc). also, you can dispatch terminal commands seamlessly from inside vim (I get `make build` in two keystrokes: `,d`).
vim (I can't speak for emacs, don't use it) is also more responsive with a much smaller resource footprint and an equivalent feature set. my work laptop can run a web browser and vim for 6+ hours. With vs code, maybe 3 hours.
I think this might be only superficially true. One of the meta-features of vim/emacs is, over months and years of use, they slowly teach you how IDEs "work", and invite you to tweak how yours works to your whim.
example: I notice a process is slow in vim. I'm able to profile the problem, identify the binary responsible, replace it with a faster equivalent program, and enjoy that improvement for the rest of my life. Such a thing may be possible in VS Code, but it's against the norm of "just install this plugin", whereas it is the norm in vim/emacs-world.
Some other scattered ideas:
I also think that, since vim and emacs are fundamentally cli tools also gives them an advantage, because you can hook them in to your terminal workflows (git add -p, git commit -v, etc). also, you can dispatch terminal commands seamlessly from inside vim (I get `make build` in two keystrokes: `,d`).
vim (I can't speak for emacs, don't use it) is also more responsive with a much smaller resource footprint and an equivalent feature set. my work laptop can run a web browser and vim for 6+ hours. With vs code, maybe 3 hours.