Aficionados of modal editing often insinuate that one would require mouse use in non-modal editing. Yet I have always fully keyboard-operated my non-modal editors, whether VSCode in the last 9 years or previously, Sublime and others, all the way back to Turbo Pascal in the late 90s. I don't ever use the mouse in them, whether I'm inside a text buffer or in the Command Palette (or in menus for the pre-Sublime editors back when). For example, F1 is bound to show "hover" doc tips over the symbol that the caret is in. A couple function keys and ctrl/alt/shift-plus-some-mnemonic letter are soo swiftly and easily muscle-memoried, I never felt any need for mousing, or for "modes" and typing just to switch from one to another.

I'm sure once one is used to modal editing, one can be speedy with it. So can I, entirely without modal yet without mousing =)

I also use VSCode and derivatives. Also mostly without mousing. But I don’t HAVE to, because I know how to use CLI tooling to not only edit files as needed but also handle things like version control — which I’ve noticed a disappointing percentage of my colleagues, even those with a decade in the field, are mystified by. I haven’t touched VSCode’s git integrations, but the astonishment at being introduced to CLI rebasing — followed by interactive rebasing — was eye-opening.