zlacker

I was more familiar with Vim bindings and relied on Vim emulation layers in various IDEs before I moved to Emacs. Evil mode and Doom made the jump possible without sacrificing too much productivity. With Evil, I didn't have to retrain my muscle memory and with Doom I didn't have to cobble together a functional config from scratch.

After a couple of months of using Doom, I felt comfortable enough to roll my own config which also helped me better understand how things worked at a lower level. More interestingly, after a couple of years, I transitioned from Evil to standard Emacs bindings as that felt better integrated with the rest of Emacs.

>>achyud+(OP)
My path was similar, except with Spacemacs, which has excellent Vim-like modal key bindings. I've been using a custom config for many years now, but evil-mode has been a crucial part of my setup. A modal interface is simply easier to use and more intuitive than twisting your fingers to hit complex key chords. I use Vi mode in shells, TUI programs, REPLs, anywhere Readline is supported, etc.

So Emacs+Vim is the best of both worlds. You get the infinite extensibility of Emacs and a sane(-ish) programming language, with the superior editing and command interface. The beauty of Emacs is that it really doesn't matter how you use it. For some modes you may need to override a keymap, or use a package like evil-collection, but most behave well OOB IME.