so ditch this nonsense and use a better distro?

Before Void I was using Debian (then Devuan), and I used aliases for the package manager commands there too.

Anyway, I think the "the program name is too long" argument is even worse.

xbps felt like a million characters to type which I hated

Ever heard of alias?

For me it's alias pks='xbps-query -Rs' and alias pki='xbps-install' (package search and package install).