Exactly, those defaults are a disgrace and also are surprisingly difficult to change, particularly when the action includes a mini-mode with its own key bindings so you remap a key, but then it still does not work after the first key press. Yes, you can find all the variables you need to change to remap a specific key but it wastes way more time than it should.

I guess most people know by now, but Emacs’ keybindings were designed for a specific keyboard that had way more keys that usual: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/495/what-...

As Emacs was ported, they replaced dedicated keys with chords and sequences and we ended up in this mess, instead of at some point doing a full review of the default keybindings to match the input devices we actually have, merging in the conventions that had developed in the meantime.

After three decades of use, I have internalized those defaults because I keep having to use Emacs in its default configuration from time to time, have remapped many keys in my workstation, bound custom functions and all that. It’s still a paper cut, and also prevents me from recommending Emacs to more casual users.

To prevent chords use sticky keys https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/StickyModifiers