You are not. Only when you start using motions, macro's, jumps (with relative line numbers) etc things got interesting (for me). The $ and ^ probably come from

You are not. Only when you start using motions, macro's, jumps (with relative line numbers) etc things got interesting (for me). The $ and ^ probably come from regex but I agree they feel a bit unergonomic on a standard keyboard. You can remap them if you're really bothered by it. Personally I tend to use 'A' and 'I' a lot more because I tend to want to insert/append directly after moving anyway. And if I don't: just press escape. A bit of a hack but at this point it's just muscle memory. And maybe in the end it all just doesn't work for you, and that's fine too! Vim is about ergonomics for a big part, and that is just a very personal thing.