Exactly. They all emulate up to a point, and that point seems different with every emulator. Then slipping out of vi mode to do something specific to that editor/environment ruins the flow.

Although the emulations are getting really good. For instance this [0] VSCode plugin isn't even an emulation. It embed neovim into VSC, even loads your init.vim file. Snappy too.

[0] https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim

I've used it quite a bit but I've had it desync from the server state somehow on multiple occasions making the experience not all that pleasant.