Programming

I use the vi option or plugins for Sublime, PHPStorm, and Pycharm or whichever IDE I'm using. Works for chrome and Firefox too.

Perhaps you want a touchscreen.

I learned basics of vim, I can recommend. But also, it takes time to master. And I'd put other stuff first like fundamentals of git (stashes, staging area, branches and rebase.)

Also, don't underestimate using an IDE that's popular, I had switched over recently and found it convenient when a colleague asks for help. I can't tell them 'oh yeah I know how to do that on my setup' (though is valid..)

Like 3 years ago, I was into emacs, which I used with vi keybindings. Many extensions provided quality of life (tramp, magit, which-key) that others (vscode) only emulated and required hardware I lacked. Anyway...

If this is really about keys, go for gnu readline flavor instead of vi. I didn't, and those are way more ubiquitous. Anyway, research that and make your own decision.

Ps, here's a rabbit hole https://codeberg.org/ashton314/emacs-bedrock#emacs-bedrock

MicroEmacs http://www.jasspa.com/

No unicode support though. For that try

https://bionic.bloovis.com/cgit/microemacs/

.. but for work I still use Eclipse (sigh)

Spyder (with conda) Arduino IDE

I personally enjoy using pycharm and vscode, depending on what I'm working on and what tools I need/want.

I used to use vim but imo it's not worth the time it requires to configure to get working properly. These days I don't code without a debugger so if there's not a good way to set breakpoints I don't even start

Doom Emacs and lazyvim nvim.

Don't know about helix, and don't really care.

Modal is incomparably more comfortable, that's the main benefit.

The problem that I have is that learning new editing keybindings would probably take me a month of time, before I get to the same amount of productivity

Do you imagine vi-based editors don't let you use your mouse or what? Go through vim-tutor, learn the basic shortcuts you need, and you're back to your old productivity in a few days. You don't need to learn vi" to select a string, you can just use your mouse.

No offense to you or your habits, but C-arrow is an idiotic movement scheme. If you have to leave the home row to move around the text, you fucked up.

Just go through vim tutor...

seeing mscode/codium/vswhatever makes my brain hurt. geocities of code. now i am using Zed. problem solved.

nano is the best (imho) for up to medium size files. It’s preinstalled in most Linux boxes , it’s simple and flexible enough, takes a minimal amount of time to learn basic for keys and then use them all the time

I've tried to learn Vim in the past but IMO it is not worth it at all. In a world without multiple cursors... sure, maybe. With multiple cursors? No way. I can can edit just as fast as I've seen any Vim user do it, and without having to remember a gazillion mnemonics and deal with the silly modal thing.

Multiple cursor editing even has some significant advantages over Vim style, e.g. it's interactive, so you can do your edit gradually and go back if you make a mistake. Rather than having to write a complex command and only finding out it if works at the end. (If you've used regex find & replace you'll understand that problem.)

I'll probably get downvoted for this since Vim is kind of a cult, and Vim users get a sense of superiority from it. Kind of like audiophiles - they don't appreciate it if you tell them their £10k valve amp doesn't actually sound any better than your £1k digital amp.

For editing on remote computers I use VSCode remote or Micro for quick tasks.