To clarify, I don't think these (or any) features are "vim-only". I was intending to say that it's the meta-feature of vim that vim-users find so sticky, that

To clarify, I don't think these (or any) features are "vim-only". I was intending to say that it's the meta-feature of vim that vim-users find so sticky, that you can trivially write your own features: composing arbitrary executables and modal editing. I think most editors nowadays are taking a page out of vim's book, by exposing increasingly lower-level interfaces to extension authors and users. In these ways, I think editors are converging with vim, over time. Vim (and emacs) has been this way forever. You don't have to wait for the editor-making company to accept that your strange request is valid, you can just hack it on yourself.