If the commands are well organized in the menu, any fool can find them. But remembering dozens of shortcuts clearly signals you know more than those who do not remember them. How would people recognize true experts if we all switched to less arcane versions of Notepad?

> Modal editing is not hard. ... Not harder than learning German or English or Chinese Mandarin.

Oh sure, it's not hard at all when compared to something really hard!

> Do you believe that if people in Germany speak german fluently they are trying to signal anything to others?

No they speak German because that's the easiest option for communicating with other people. Vim is not the easiest option for text editing.

Terrible analogy.

You simply don't understand.

Do you suffer for thinking on English? Do you suffer for driving your car and changing gears? Do you suffer for using a pen for writing?

You can try to write with the hand you don't usually write with. You would suffer if you try to write the same things you write with the other hand but if you improve a little every day over time you will be capable of writing with it well.

I think there’s been a conflation in this thread between suffering and struggle. It’s possible to have one without the other. Struggle is a requirement for learning very useful things.

It’s entirely possible to learn modal editing without suffering but it’s not likely to learn it without struggling, given how most people are raised on the mouse.