For some people cua-mode being opt-in and very difficult to discover organically will be a larger barrier for comfort and learning than normal/insert modes and motion commands could ever hope to be.

(10 year evil-mode user who moved to Neovim for other reasons, chiefly performance/LSP nativity/plugin ecosystem vitality)

You just need learn C-x C-s (save) and C-x C-c (exit) to be able to edit files on the command line. It's kind of like nano, except has syntax highlighting.