This is a point I completely agree with. Firefox is the perfect example of a context where you would want vi binds, but the implementation ends up being half-baked.
The fun part is when web apps like GitLab, GitHub and my email provider provide their own keyboard-centric, vi-style navigation layer, and I have to compromise between either using my browser extension's vi layer or the web app's one.
Nyxt and qutebrowser try to tackle this by offering a native, keyboard-centric, vi-style navigation model - though neither is (yet) a full-featured replacement for Firefox or Chromium-based browsers.
For IDEs, I find the emulation to be alright for basic editing, falling apart soon after. There is an implementation for VSCode that is actually pretty good, as it makes use of Neovim as a backend server - though, it's of course not perfect, and customizing it is a pain I imagine.
Perhaps somewhat ironically, Emacs's evil mode is the best vi layer implementation I've used - probably mostly because customizing it in elisp is much nicer than interfacing with arcane vim APIs.
The vi emulation really is only as good as the implementation. The problem is that it has to be reimplemented for every context, and made to play nicely with the limitations and edge cases of said context. This is, of course, a lot of work.
The fun part is when web apps like GitLab, GitHub and my email provider provide their own keyboard-centric, vi-style navigation layer, and I have to compromise between either using my browser extension's vi layer or the web app's one.
Nyxt and qutebrowser try to tackle this by offering a native, keyboard-centric, vi-style navigation model - though neither is (yet) a full-featured replacement for Firefox or Chromium-based browsers.
For IDEs, I find the emulation to be alright for basic editing, falling apart soon after. There is an implementation for VSCode that is actually pretty good, as it makes use of Neovim as a backend server - though, it's of course not perfect, and customizing it is a pain I imagine.
Perhaps somewhat ironically, Emacs's evil mode is the best vi layer implementation I've used - probably mostly because customizing it in elisp is much nicer than interfacing with arcane vim APIs.
The vi emulation really is only as good as the implementation. The problem is that it has to be reimplemented for every context, and made to play nicely with the limitations and edge cases of said context. This is, of course, a lot of work.