I don't get the point of using a modal editor these days. Just get a keyboard with QMK ( for example, there is also a software approach) and you can edit completely on the home row (everywhere!) without the need for a modal editor.
Let's say you have 'foo bar' string, and you want to change quotes to "
In Kakoune this operation could look like this:
<a-a>' # select string including quotes
<a-S> # select first and last character of previous selection
r" # replace selections with "
Now how would you achieve that in non-modal editor that also doesn't have this operation built-in?
I consider key remapping orthogonal though, as TeddyDD has stated, there's more to modal editors than just convenient shortcuts.
Select inside a block? Comment out a region? Jump to line X? Jump Y lines up? Go-to definition? Autocomplete? Insert snippet? Even a simple thing as delete the next two words or jump to next "f"?
I think the issue is that you don't grok vim.