Joe is still around, and actually quite usable/performant. If it's invoked as "jstar", it gets even closer to WordStar/TurboPascal keybindings. It can also do "jmacs" which has Emacs keybindings, the default "joe" configuration being something in between.
Does syntax highlighting, incremental search, regexes, and all that pretty fast.
If we're talking old DOS editors, JED actually has a quite decent BRIEF emulation.
> old DOS editors.
PC-Write key bindings are out there too..
Re:The JED Programmer's Editor (2017)
by EvanAnderson on Sunday May 03, 2020 @12:09AM
(#23056801)
Having a strong Turbo Pascal background, with liberal use of EDIT.COM as my "IDE" for Turbo Assembler, joe was a welcome replacement dir vi when I really started getting into Linux back in the 90s. I still have it loaded on a couple of boxes today. The key bindings are so familiar and "comfortable".
I didn't want to invest the time to learn vi or emacs so I used JED for a while, and it served me well. But coming from DOS, JED still had a bit of a learning curve. I figured if I was going to pick up a totally foreign editor, I should probably just bite the bullet and learn vi or emacs.
I settled on vi(m) eventually and never looked back. JED helped me make the transition though.
There was also an editor JOE which had Turbo C keybindings. That would have been a great fit for DOS heads like me but I learned about it too late. The ship had sailed. (it's just as well -- I now have vim muscle memory, which is far more useful)