I really don't get it. Vi is unintuitive and unfamiliar to unix newebies, but at some point every even half-competent person on unix could use it enough to at least do simple config file changes. Plus, if you took time to learn it properly, you actually knew a quite capable editor. And the beginner unfriendliness could presumably have been mostly fixed, without much cost to existing expert users. For example by defaulting to some helpful status message how look at help and insert text (and have cursor keys and Ctrl-S etc. work as "expected" in insert mode). Or maybe a message "press Ctrl-D to enter newbie mode" that experienced vimers could just ignore but would provide CUA style keybindings and modeless editing to everyone else.
Instead now everyone has to deal with a new (and for proficient users really quite worthless) editor with its own set of completely bizarre keybindings (not emacs, not readline, not vi, not CUA), but none of the upsides that come with emacs or vi's idiosyncracies. Ctrl-O to save? WTF? Literally the only advantage over vi is that it displays some instructions at the bottom, albeit not in a form any real newbie would understand at all.
Nano (and by extension this) feel like the worst of all possible worlds -- what am I missing?