> It's easier for me to remember (for example) 10 nouns that can be combined with 10 verbs than to memorise 100 shortcuts.

1. There are no nouns or verbs in Vim. There's a haphazardly built combination of letters that are laboriously explained as some grand design.

2. You keep coming up with random numbers that make no sense and pretend (yes, pretend) that they are somehow true and relevant

I didn't memorise 100 shortcuts.

The only reason you struggle to get the same functionality out of an IDE is that you don't want to invest as much time and energy into learning it as you did with emacs/vim. There's nothing inherently easier about memorising `M-x sql-connect` or 20 random letters in Vim than learning basic functionality and shortcuts of an IDE.