Why is the compiling process so complicated compared to other firmwares?

InkWatchy solves an important problem with all watchy firmwares. All other firmwares are hard to maintain because images, fonts etc. are stored as binary data and most often with no source to them. I generate everything dynamically, editing a font is as easy as replacing a .ttf file, modifying an image is just editing an .png file. Secondly, I put those resources into LittleFS which means they are seperated from the program. This improves upload speeds as you are not uploading the same resources all the time. I could go on and on on why this is all needed (the filesystem mainly) but I have already written down the features of this software in the readme.

And many other things (Rust, compiling from scratch so configuration from sdkconfig works well giving full control to me and you, etc)...

vscode and docker? BLOAT

There is a guide to only use docker and CLI, if you don't want to use docker, simply install what's needed and listed in the dockerfile and compile it natively on your system, that was never an issue, docker is only to ensure less experienced users can use it too.