Whenever you say words “natural”, or “friendly” you actually mean “what I am used to”. As the saying goes “Basically, the only ‘intuitive’ interface is the nipple. After
that, it's all learned.” (Usenet discussion about Apple Macintosh).
So, no, I spent couple of years struggling with non-modal editors, where I had that feeling all the time “I have no idea how to do it effectively in this $EDITOR, while I know five keypresses which would do it for me in vim.” Finally, I have liberated myself and switched back to vim.
> “Basically, the only ‘intuitive’ interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.”
The nipple is not intuitive for everyone.
One of our children struggled mightily with the nipple and we had a miserable two or three months of breastpumping and finger-feeding before he finally figured it out.
Following-up on irrelevancy: what made you stick? We had the same experience, but gave up after 6 weeks because breastpumping was exhausting, and switched to bottles and artificial milk which our daughter loved immediately.
Just an FYI Kakoune is a modal editor. I've actually tried it and OP has a point, for many of the things that you would use visual mode in vim things are very natural in Kakoune. It's also surprisingly accessible to someone used to vim. That said, it's difficult to leave the huge community behind vim behind.
So, no, I spent couple of years struggling with non-modal editors, where I had that feeling all the time “I have no idea how to do it effectively in this $EDITOR, while I know five keypresses which would do it for me in vim.” Finally, I have liberated myself and switched back to vim.