I don't! That's just a dumb joke. A thing that I semi-seriously think: modal editing is not some uniquely interesting or advantageous way to navigate and edit text. A thing that I mostly-seriously think: most more recent methods for editing and navigating code are a lot better vim-style modal text editing.

Modal editing is very efficient imo. Once you get used to it, there is no going back. Plus, in my experience, it’s much easier on the wrists in general.

But I think Vim bindings in an IDE or Vim with a LSP plugin is the killer combo.

I expected it was because of the vim crowd's belief that a small footprint is essential for some reason. I use evil mode in emacs and can't understand why vim people place arbitrary limits on themselves when emacs is a more full IDE experience that costs them very little to jump to.

I use a remote machine at work for all development. With tmux + Vim, I get persistent editor sessions with native performance.

The alternative used to be writing code over VNC (not fun!), but we’re now moving towards VS Code Remote. I don’t see myself changing to it anytime soon, though.

The only thing what makes modal editing bearable (from UX PoV) is the unlimited undo.

e.g. Would anyone take a plane that has modal cockpit buttons?

All editors are modal, just to different extents. In Notepad, if you type a letter it inserts it, unless you have some text highlighted, in which case it replaces that text. "Some text is selected" is a mode.

The big thing that classic vi got wrong with modes from a usability perspective is that changing modes is mostly invisible. In vim, however, you can configure it to change the cursor shape in different modes, and this is a pretty effective cue. (It's also the default behavior in gvim.)

What does flying a plane have to do with editing and navigating code?

It happens me every day: I just start to type while still in command mode, and then have to press "u" a couple of times.

(But ok, thats maybe just me - thought this is a common experience, and I just wouldn't like to sit behind a pilot doing the same...)

This problem can be mitigated to an extent with a vim setting to change the cursor from a block to a vertical line when you enter insert mode. After using it for a bit your brain will learn to look for the vertical line before typing.

This sort of thing has been a factor in airplane accidents - pilots becoming confused about stuff like the automation regime they're in.