Over at the Emacs reddit, honeywhite wonders why anyone would use the Emacs default key bindings. He’s an Emacs user but can’t understand why anyone would prefer the standard Emacs key bindings to one of the Vi emulation modes.
As most of you know, I was a Vi user for more than a couple of decades and then moved to Emacs. When I did, I went all in and learned the Emacs key bindings. It was a bit hard rearranging my muscle memory but now I’m perfectly happy with the Emacs bindings.
Honeywhite’s real objection to the standard Emacs editor is that commands generally require a key chord but that’s because Emacs, unlike Vi(m), isn’t modal. If your editor isn’t modal, you’re pretty much stuck with key chording (or menus/arrow keys). Oddly, honeywhite doesn’t mention the real advantage of Vi key bindings: they’re composable. Once you’ve learned the movement keys and that d is for “delete,” you automatically know how to delete just about everything. That’s a very powerful abstraction that Emacs lacks.
Fortunately, Emacs has both camps covered. If you hate key chording, you can use one of the Vi emulation modes. If you can’t put up with modality, you can use the standard bindings. I like both systems but decided to learn the Emacs way when I switched. That’s just me; you can switch and (mostly) bring Vim with you if you prefer.