I think the issue is that there are numerous command line utilities available from all sorts of places, but none of them succinctly expose all vSphere API functions to allow one-line commands to do actions that are perceived as simple and mundane.
But if you dig into it a little bit, this would probably not really be possible (or at the very least not practical), and the language bindings available cover every scenario you likely need (whether it's govmomi, pyvmomi, the vCLI Perl bindings, or PowerCLI). The problem is getting familiarity with the way the vSphere API does business and with one or more of the languages/tools available to consume it.
For one-line script calls, PowerCLI probably comes the closest to meeting this requirement, but many users (usually Linux users) avoid PowerCLI because of the traditional Windows requirement. Even still, you are able to develop your own command line to do the things you need easily and call it from bash script. This could be in Go, or Python, or Perl, or Java, or C#, or whatever thing you love to write in. (all of those can compile and/or run on Linux and Windows)
But, as with anything, flexibility increases complexity, while simplicity decreases flexibility. True elegance comes from striking the right balance.