Sometimes when I don't realize I'm in insert mode, I jump around the document and don't know what just happened. Visual cues in-between would have been nice, so I don't always feel as surprised as I do, lol.
Although I don't know if in that particular fiddly case it would have any benefit.
There are different solutions for it:
- Obsessively press escape so you're always in normal mode
- Style the statusline so it's very colorful when you're not in normal mode
- Have the cursor be "fat" when in normal mode and "thin" when in insert mode (isn't this the default?)
Even though I've been using Vim for 15 years or so I also enter visual mode for some commands. It's quite useful, but not necessary all the time (like di" for instance).
On both vim and nvim, updatetime is 4 seconds, so if you have 4 seconds of inactivity that autocommand will automatically put you back into normal mode.