Modal editors are the only solution I've come across to what I see as the problem with modern keyboards and editors: the inability to do everything you want to do without moving your hands away from the home row. Intellij, eclipse, sublime text, every "modern" non-modal editor I've used expects me to move my hands to the arrow keys if I want to move the caret. This is a personal gripe for me as repeatedly moving my hand back and forth between the home row, the mouse and arrow keys triggers my RSI. At least a non-modified bash prompt lets me navigate using some archaic control key combinations (^a: beginning of line, ^e: end of line, ^f: forward one character, etc.)
You can get vi-like navigation in bash with a simple `set -o vi`
Humans don't generally deal well with inconsistencies. I can type on Dvorak and QWERTY, at decent speed on both, but mostly type on Dvorak. Typing QWERTY gives me a bit of mental fatigue from continuously overriding my Dvorak-typing circuitry.
I can feel a less extreme version of that mental fatigue from using modal editors. Just a growing irritation as I hit keys in the wrong mode, which happens at a fairly constant rate throughout the editing session.
I used vim for several years, and honestly, I never found anything faster for editing (though, not so much for writing, but very efficient at throwing around and manipulating anything you don't already have done.)
I don't use it for the same reason that I take the slightly-longer-but-much-less-congested route to work. The annoyance of stop-and-go traffic costs me more mentally than those extra minutes.
0. besides adding backlights, changing build quality, and perhaps other layout options like dvorak or colemak, keyboards have not really changed in decades...
And I closed the page. Modal editing simply makes zero sense on a modern keyboard. It is awful.