> What works best for me is no modal editing at all.
I used vim for 8 years and after switching to Emacs, realized that I'm the same. I was spending way more time (in vim) thinking about (to borrow another commenter's metaphor) how I was going to play the notes than what notes I was going to write.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve internalized Vim keybindings so much that there’s no friction between thinking and doing on the screen. If I want to place the cursor on the next line, move to the end and add a semicolon, then jump to the end of the file, I just do it. My pet theory is that because Vim keybindings are unintuitive, developing proficiency required building muscle memory, which offloads cognitive load from my brain to my fingers so text editing becomes mechanical rather than cognitive.
seriously, study after study shows that just giving people money is the most effective form of altruism. just give it away. go to your city's homeless shelter and give money away. write a check for your local school board. keep everything anonymous. give it all away.
honestly I'm so sick of this attitude. it's the same as the recycling push...when like a dozen companies are creating the vast majority of pollution, there's not a lot us little people can do. HSAs are a symptom of an extremely broken system. we should fix the system, not max out on our HSAs (if we even can...see the other replies to this post)
so Lisp is actually not a pure language, like, at all. Emacs is often written about as a big hairy ball of state and Lisp itself can be as imperative or statefule as you want. So while I don't know much about what you're designing, Lisp wouldn't be necessarily a bad choice.