> it took me maybe 15 years of using the terminal every single day to get used to using Ctrl+A to go to the beginning of the line (or Ctrl+E for the end)
Ctrl+LeftArrow and Ctrl+RightArrow also work with every readline-compatible shell and they are much more intuitive, especially if you are not used to terminal text editors.
> it’s very inconsistent between programs
Readline or emulations thereof are pretty common and the de-facto standard. But of course programs can do their own thing if they want to - it's not like GUI text eidtors all have consistent shortcuts.
cat / nc / etc. are not editors at all and therefore don't provide those shortcuts. They take an input stream and forward it.
Ctrl+LeftArrow and Ctrl+RightArrow also work with every readline-compatible shell and they are much more intuitive, especially if you are not used to terminal text editors.
> it’s very inconsistent between programs
Readline or emulations thereof are pretty common and the de-facto standard. But of course programs can do their own thing if they want to - it's not like GUI text eidtors all have consistent shortcuts.
cat / nc / etc. are not editors at all and therefore don't provide those shortcuts. They take an input stream and forward it.