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Thanks for your reply. I wanted to clarify because of these 2 statements:

> I do way less keystrokes in modal editors. I feel handicapped without. My patience runs out as soon as I have to use the arrows to fix something a few words back.

nano and micro do support lots of types of cursor movement (the same ^a and ^e emacs bindings that work across the mac os work fine, for instance. They also have word-forward and word-back) without resorting to hammering the arrow keys. And mouse support too, for the times when that makes more sense. And all of this without having modes, and with most of the bindings visible on screen (which there is more than enough room for in modern usage so I'm a big fan of that).

> ZZ and ZQ isn't very difficult.

Keeping track of what mode you're in is the primary reason it doesn't speak to me, is all. I haven't met many people (anecdotal disclaimer!!) who actually use vim by choice, compared to how many young developers I've met who seem to have been told they have to use it when using the Terminal, so they subsequently wrote down "ESC, :wq" on a sticky note, and get flummoxed if they accidentally do something wrong because they have no idea how to use it. I saw these developers actually shying away from using things like git cli -- they became afraid of editing text in a terminal due to the unforgiving vim learning curve.*

Of course, I also agree you don't have to dislike vim and am glad your expertness with it makes you more productive. I've seen several developers who have mastered vim zipping around multiple documents and who knows what, with great efficiency. (While I don't feel like I'm missing anything by using a GUI app for such tasks, I'm still very impressed by those people!) I just want you to know I don't dislike vim completely irrationally :)

* As an example, this very thread has about 5 vim experts who didn't even know about your neat ZZ and ZQ trick! If lots of pros don't even use vim as effectively as it's designed to be used, what hope do new users have?



> And all of this without having modes, and with most of the bindings visible on screen

> Keeping track of what mode you're in is the primary reason it doesn't speak to me, is all.

Both vim and neovim has the mode on the bottom unless you're in normal. I first started using vim to get away from electron apps eating my ram. But it clicked pretty quick and fixed my RSI among other things. Modal editing is underrated.




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