From the perspective of someone who uses Visual Studio Code, but also knows how to exit vim, there are a couple reasons that most developers who prefer one of the three, at least those I’ve spoken to.

1. VS Code is a Microsoft product, and while “open source” it isn’t really open source. The core utility is but Microsoft ships the final application with some proprietary features. If this is your main gripe, then you can try VSCodium instead, which is a “fork” that doesn’t have the Microsoft additions.
2. VS Code uses Electron, which is essentially browser emulation and isn’t exactly optimized. CLI editors like the above take up far fewer resources than a Visual Studio Code instance would. Unlike point (1), I don’t think there’s really a way around this in all practicality. It’s just an unavoidable fact. You can chose to still use VS Code of course, most personal computers can easily handle the load. But many see that as unnecessary when they get the same amount of “power” from a CLI editor.
3. Plugins for the CLI applications are very powerful, and the ability to navigate using only the keyboard is by design. Many swear by keyboard-only operation of a computer because it’s faster and promotes more optimal methods of doing tasks. It forces discovery of new features and hotkeys by making things annoying to do otherwise. VS Code (and most editors) include a “vim keybindings” specifically for this reason. You’ll find that it’s a very popular method of working.

Really it comes down to personal preferences and what you “grew up” using. It’s really hard to transition into something like vim and it takes a concerted effort to switch by most users. You have to want to switch, otherwise you’ll find it too difficult a learning curve or find yourself wandering back to more “featured” applications.

There are likely more reasons out there, but these are, in my experience, the primary reasons.

One thing I haven’t heard others mention is fun. The better I get with vim, the more fun I have applying my skills to work efficiently.

I also love that I can use it with a phone keyboard and still remain highly efficient. Being able to SSH into my server on the go and not be terribly hampered in my admin and editing is pretty amazing.

Ubiquitous, powerful, flexible, lightweight, fun: it’s a pretty good mix of positives in the tradeoff for vim.

If you actually understand the programming language, libraries, problem, and think about your solution first, you can code just fine in ed, the standard text editor. Sometimes I do, I’m the third real programmer

In practice, I mostly code in Vim, which launches instantly, is completely customizable, and I can type and edit faster than in anything else. IDEs are excruciatingly slow, with all the highlighting and analysis stuff on, waiting for code completion instead of just typing it out because you know things.

You don’t need any of that.

There’s also the issue that VSCode is spyware created by Microsoft, and both things should send you running away.

As a Vim/NeoVim user my number one reason is speed. There’s a pretty steep learning curve, but it doesn’t take long to see noticeable improvements.

Aside from terminal applications generally running faster than GUI ones, there is a tremendous amount of flexibility that it offers when it comes to actual text editing. For example, you learn how to type things like _f(vi(cfoo _f(ci(foo^† which goes to the beginning of the line, finds the first open parens, selects everything inside of the parens expression, then replaces that text with “foo”. After a while these kinds of inputs become second nature, and you can start using them to construct macros on the fly that can be applied to different places in your code.

One major downside is that it can take some configuration to get working the way you want it, especially if you want an IDE-like environment. NeoVim comes with a built-in LSP interface, which I’ve been able to get working pretty well for all of the languages that I use the most, but it’s still kind of a pain to configure.

I’m sure Emacs is similar, but I’ve never used it. I don’t think many people use Nano unless they need to edit something in a terminal but don’t know how to use Vim. On that note, being comfortable with a terminal editor means that you’ll have no problem if you’re SSH-ing into a server or using the TTY console.

^† _f(ci(foo avoids an unnecessary mode change, see comment below

Different tasks. VSCode is littered with half-baked spaghetti code from various projects. My terminal window is for system-level non-project interactions.

I stick with terminals and vi for various day-to-day administrative things, because you never know when you’ll have to log into a different machine which doesn’t have all your software and preferences set up. I would prefer not struggle to recall keyboard shortcuts I last used 100 years ago when that happens.

It’s bad enough having ADHD and long covid to completely obliterate my working memory, without the added irritation of googling “man vi move to section”, knowing you have definitely used the command many times in the past.

They work in terminal. To me a more interesting question would be, why VSCode over PyCharm for Python for example.

I would prefer micro instead and it is cross-platform

If you frequently work on remote systems you frequently only get command line access, where you can still use vim/nano/emacs but not a full IDE like VS Code. In that case you might find it more convenient to learn one text editor well and forgo the IDE.

Because Microsoft is The Debil.