Powerful tools unavoidably have a significant cognitive load.
It’s quite possible to reduce that load by improving how some features work (for example, searchable command bars are better than endless menus) but if you’re not doing that you’re pretty much just reducing the power of the tool, as here.
Ultimately it comes down to personal preference but I’ve basically gotten to the point where when I’m actually writing code I use VSCode and when I need access to more advanced tooling, or have to deal with some of our legacy build systems, I pop into visual studio proper. I think I’m just a bit more use to some of that dev tooling being outside of the editor but I would really love some bigger investments in the .NET dev tooling in VSCode and the .NET CLI so I can have an editor that’s just an editor most of the time and still be able to take advantage of the great debugger and everything else VS provides.
I think something like Blender is a good example of a tool in which many menus are truly needed, but IDEs are simple in this regard.
The lack of avoidance of cognitive load is a choice, not a necessity,