It’s strange. I have heard this from lots of others too. I think I am an anomaly here. I can’t live without shell vi mode

I'm the same and in my opinion this is the best of both worlds. Taking the time to learn some of the regular (emacs-style) shortcuts is one of the best investments I've ever done. Even just CTRL+Y and the likes.

edit: And of course, CTRL+R, the best time saver of all

agreed, i use neovim as a terminal multiplexer because vi-mode is really bad. I wrote a blog post on how i solved the issue for myself https://loosh.ch/blog/neovidenal

Huh. I don’t use vi-mode for more than jumping to the beginning or end of a line, which I like a lot.

Agree.

I WANT to love it - and if I was only ever working on one, or a small number of systems that I was the only one working on I’d probably do it. I’m ALL about customizing my environment.

However ssh into various servers through the day (some of which are totally ephemeral), and having to code switch my brain back and forth between vim mode and emacs mode in the shell would just slow me down and be infuriating each time I connect to a new box.

I used to hate it because I'd sometimes change modes without realizing it, but I began to appreciate it a lot more when I added a mode indicator -- a red 'N' on the rightmost side of the input line.