On commute distances with a monthly ticket, train has been competitive for a while, but longer distances are tough, especially if you’re multiple people.

As a student I used the Interrail ticket to travel all over europe on a shoestring budget.

Also there are plenty of offerings, which let you travel larger distances for a low price (e.g., ÖBB Sparschiene 29 eur vienna to amsterdam), you have to book it some time in advance though, similarly to flying...

Interrail is great - we spent 3 month last year seeing all of Europe. But it doesn’t include your country of residence, so visiting the parents on the other side of the state is not an option. And traveling with the cheap tickets and kids is hard - if you miss the train (which just happens with kids) the ticket is void. The ticket is not refundable if plans change. All of these downsides that a car doesn’t have (I still prefer train, but we can afford it). And for longer distances, train becomes hard - we’ve been to Mallorca by train and ferry, but it takes a few days instead of a few hours. And it’s substantially more expensive on top.

daily commute is a fairly different story. Night trains are about mid-range distances (say ~500 km) where you might also cross country borders.

Quite a bit further than 500 km; think 600 km (Amsterdam–Berlin) to 1000 km (Amsterdam–Wien). And that is leaving out the additional distance one might travel onwards or towards the night train's stations.

indeed longer distances are within the broader proposition of a night train network. leaving earlier in the evening and arriving before noon almost doubles the distance. though this comes at the expense of a shorter day.

now about that shift key... I think I read somewhere that capitalization is a relatively recent invention (like after 1000 AD). people used to do all caps and then they invented all lower case and then somebody had the idea of complicating things by mixing the two :-)