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Heavy shell and vim user here, but I simply cannot imagine how this might be convenient. A bunch of readline-style shortcuts will do the job just fine. And they are everywhere. SSH, database prompts, even login screens support them.

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Preemptively justifying something more efficient that you haven't used, because what you have is "fine," is a behavior I see from heavy Vim users when they justify not using IDEs, which are much more efficient than Vim for writing code. (I'm also a heavy Vim user, and IDEs are so much nicer for coding, especially efficiency). So, I'd say your story checks out.

I did try this mode some time ago and found it really inconvenient. Also I'm not a person to dismiss IDEs, and I never recommend Vim to anyone I know as a better way of coding.

No hard feelings, I see how you might have read that from my comment.

Programs that use readline can be configured to use vi mode via inputrc. For the few that aren't you can always use rlwrap. Overall there's no downside.

I hadn't heard of these options before, thanks for highlighting them.

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