Oh I'm just snarking at 'modal text editing is some programming superpower'. I've had RSI scares and similarly odd change-of-habit relief.
As to the second thing, it occurred to me recently that my .emacs is old enough to vote and probably still contains bits of other people's .emacsen that were old enough to vote when I first edited it.
Two objections come to mind at the moment::
* vim keybindings have helped my RSI significantly (and before you go there, I got RSI when I was an IDE user, before I focused on on Emacs)
* Using Emacs and building my own config has not made me massively more efficient at the workflow level, but it has taught me a great deal about software design and development than I would have otherwise learned.