Some example of that idea I use every day is https://codemadness.org/sfeed-simple-feed-parser.html, where feed parsing, serialization and visualization are completely separated in small orthogonal binaries with very few options. It could have been one fat "sfeed" or something like its newsboat instead. (shilling it a bit more there: https://world-playground-deceit.net/blog/2024/10/sfeed-setup...)
FWIW, I’ve been using *nix for about 25 years, and had zero problems adapting to ripgrep. You kept -i and -v, which honestly covers 90% of common usage.
I don't usually like doing this, but if I had to step out of my wheelhouse and guesstimate, I think it's probably just some form of nostalgia reasoning. People remember the "simpler" times and just want to have it again. But of course, the "simpler" times are less a reflection of reality and more a reflection of your perception of the world. IMO anyway. (I have the same sort of inclination, but I try to recognize it for what it is: personal bias. Others seem unable to do this and mistake this personal bias for objective reality.)
My point is that you are treating an ideal ("do one thing and doing it well") as an end instead of a means. Moreover, you are treating it as if there is any actual choice in the matter. In reality, the tooling most of us use on the command line violates the Unix philosophy in some way or another. So the question is not "should I adhere to the Unix philosophy?" but "what makes a good user experience?"