And you can hook in fzf to it to get a proper list of previous commands all fuzzy matched!! Oh-my-zsh just requires adding fzf to your plugins list (:
I survived for years with just https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions which is similarly great, but fills a slightly different role. Just start typing and you'll see a faded preview of the most recent command matching & u ctrl+f to autocomplete it. Is gr8
I just got moved to a new team, and my new team lead up arrow spams. I was about to tell him about ctrl-r, but he found his command, and I'm awkward, so I didn't say anything. Maybe next time.
I was quite habituated with :x/:x!, but after switching to Kakoune, I use :wq/:wq!, because :x/:x! does not exist. Yes, it's one extra key, but I like the overall reduce in cognitive overhead.