Sometimes you don't even have the luxury of nano. Any moderately advanced Linux user should probably learn the basics of vi. Just knowing how to insert text and save it can fix a system that's stuck in recovery. Even if it's just to add a comment in front of a line in a config file.
Vim (or emacs, or any other advanced text editor) is much easier to use than nano when you need to do something more complex than type couple of lines.
Nano isn't even that simple. Ctrl+X to quit? I guess if you use phonetic sounds to figure out how to exit a program. At least Vim uses the idea of "use what the words start with."
I personally use micro in the terminal, and Kate if I want a GUI to write. Vim and Emacs are fine for those who want it, I have no stakes in the editor wars beyond "I just want my program to do what I want, and I want it to be simple to learn."
In every post of this kind I am amazed at so many people using nano instead of micro which is SO MUCH BETTER while being the same thing at the same time.
Isn't this supposed to be VIM vs Emac? What's is there point to be programming in the terminal anyway? Nano is good to fix some config files while your are in there, but if I needed to do real programming I'll be finding something that works in the GUI.
The problem I had with nano is that, for the time being, it was supposed to be easy to use. With that in account I always get lost when saving a file and closing the thing because one's used to doing something else with Ctrl+O and Ctrl+X.
Whereas with Vim (and Neovim for a little while, and now with Vis) I knew it had a steep learning curve from the start so I always had it in mind. And all the funny stories about quitting vim.
Easy is relative. What are you trying to do? Replace a value in an yaml file? Then nano is easier. Trying to refactor a business critical perl/brainfuck polyglot script in production? Then you probably want to use vim (or emacs if you are one of those people)
Nano is my "daily drive", but I'd use vim as well -- takes a couple seconds to search for "how to type in linux vim" and "how to save a file in linux vim" anyways. :^)
For vim I had to config or install something just to be able to COPY something to use outside vim, how backwards is that? Isn't this the most standard feature one can expect to work as default?
I started on Emacs and then didn't use it for a few years and forgot everything so now I'm stuck on Nano. But that's fine because nano does everything I want it to do.
I spent the weekend failing to make my civ mods work, with a thousand lines of notes.. 2/3 in, I think "damnit blazeknave. You spend months perfecting this stupid fucking obsidian setup, and you've been here in notepad+ like a fucking jabroni."
Worst is when installing a new distro(usually in a vm ) and it defaults to nano and for some weird reason no vi of any sort is installed. I hated nano. Last time I intentionally used something like nano was the 90s with pine I think.
Vim's keybinds are intuitive and Nano's keybinds are completely unusable, if you're asking me. I cannot use Nano without becoming horribly frustrated immediately. The reason "how to exit Vim" is a meme, is because everyone's been there, one time. The difference is that you never stop not knowing how to exit Nano. I also hate Emacs' default keybinds, but that's mostly because I don't want carpal tunnel syndrome, so that's a different issue; Emacs' keybinds actually do make some amount of sense, in all honesty, even though they're objectively dangerous. Gun to my head, I could probably, technically "use" vanilla Emacs albeit with some difficulty. I cannot possibly use Nano and I would rather get shot.
My problem with those are that I always manage to get lost on where the program has its focus/what kind of instruction is expecting.
And while trying to go back to normal I end up messing it more and more.
Maybe some day I will get there, but it is still not the day.
Ugh, I swear vi and it's derivatives are the absolute worse text editors going. There may have been reasons thirty or forty years ago, but now it's just complexity and a weird ui for the sake of it
The first time I found myself in nano was when testing a distro fifteenor twenty years ago. I had to edit some files and it was the only available editor. The damn thing was a horror to use. I still have no idea who it caters to. I haven't had to use it since though.