Something that annoys me is that the only good thing about vim is the idea of composable modal actions.

Don't get me wrong, that feature alone is powerful enough to choose vim as your editor of choice, but... There is no reason whatsoever why you couldn't have an editor with 2022's standards of UX and newbie friendliness that makes use of the same idea; it just hasn't happened.

Even when modern editors adapt vim functionality as a plugin, they just replicate the original design choices. Esc to escape insertion mode is clearly a stupid choice in a modern keyboard setup, but we keep it as a default; we just haven't moved past the original decision.

Has anyone heard of a (serious / developed) effort to create such a product?