I've been using Emacs for over 40 years but still find the shell my go-to sorting approach. Right tool for the job and all that.
It feels great when you can use narrow-to-region² to perfect a complex address or write a custom function with all your editor's power at your fingertips. With the sad, but obvious, drawback that the changes aren't linked in your disjoint shell and editor history.
¹ https://manpages.debian.org/jessie/moreutils/vipe.1.en.html
² Nowadays, that is more likely https://github.com/chrisbra/NrrwRgn for me.