I recommend learning about Unix and the associated philosophies - you sound like there’s a lot more growth in your future!
The main problem with VIM is that nobody reads the documentation, and jumps directly trying to configure vim to imitate what they experienced with other softwares.
Most VIM users never understand VIM philosophy and inner mechanism supporting it. They just try to bend VIM into another graphical code editor.
It's like the meme about "exiting vim". It is pointless. Once you understand VIM you never need to exit it. Just Ctrl-z or use neovim terminal if needed.
The best challenge i was given by VIM guru, when i was asking help installing dozen of plugin, was to read the vim doc (:help) and just use for 6 months a VIM pure vanilla, without any plugin and minimal vimrc. After more than 20 years using VIM daily, i just understood i never learn how to use VIM and were just an adept of CARGO-CULT, victim of mass spread anti-pattern.
What are some examples of plugins people commonly use that you think are useless?
For example browsers. Whenever there is a Must Have extension that basically everyone downloads and installs, we should not be saying "See! It's great that software has plugins and extensions!" We should be saying "The development team totally missed this."