I think it just my experience. I was a vi user many years before the vimulator came along. I didn't like the key-bindings for buffers and the developer wasn't nice. I stuck with my ways in vi until 95.
I switched to emacs but used viper the vi emulator in emacs. Emacs buffers and keymaps are amazing compared to vim. Eventually I kept a reasonably configured vim around. But I'd never use it for more than a quick look at something. 2011 I used vim for a year, for work. It was very lacking despite a ton of vim script. Which is awful. I switched back to emacs with evil.
Recently I've realized I don't like evil is it's goal to emulate vim.