> Someone (probably a sysadmin) showed me vi. I thought the whole concepts of modes was stupid. I found someone who used Emacs. I asked them: What happens when

> Someone (probably a sysadmin) showed me vi. I thought the whole concepts of modes was stupid. I found someone who used Emacs. I asked them: What happens when I open a file in Emacs and hit the “A” key? They told me it would just insert the letter “A” in the file. I decided I wanted to learn Emacs instead of vi. This is how I started. You could go with nano/pico, but then you're stuck there... if you start with emacs, you can use it just like you would use nano, but when you need something more, it's always there, just one google search and one key combination needed (and hopfeully you remember that, so you don't need to google it again).