And I'm not going to RTFB.
The example of customization for different programmers' keyboards was a good one. Taken to the stupid extreme. So the problem here is all the programmers have the most productive environment for them individually, which then is a detriment to the occasional other programmer on their keyboard.
SO WHAT?
So would you prefer to drop the productivity of ALL of them just so any of them could walk over to any of the other's desk and be able to code at full speed, where full speed is the compromise which means none of them are every fully productive?
Like I explained in my IDE VS Editor rant, it is a matter of tradeoffs. Vi was not my 1st editor, Wordstar was. So my baby chick imprint is non-modal. My 1st full time programmer environment was using vi, but I quickly moved to Brief. Brief was MUCH better. Over the years I moved between various non-modal editors. Visual Slick was also very nice. But when I moved back to vi, by way of gvim, I was much happier.
Gvim has the nice syntax highlighting, GUI touches while staying the hell out of my way.
Modal is evil for some people. Non modal is evil for me. Ctl / Alt / Meta key usage is far more evil. Who has bad wrists, Bill Joy or Richard Stallman? Comes from reaching while a finger is pressing the Ctl key.