I think that those two did things that you could not have hacked into their predecessors without esentially making a whole new editor, so you may as well go ahead and write a whole new editor.
OTOH I don't know if that's the case for vim, which is what people seem to mean these days when they talk about vi.
vim is not vi. vi is actually quite painful to use, especially when you're well versed in vim. when there are almost no features in your editor, those modes are not all that helpful. it's also a fraction of the codebase of vim
vim also has a pretty horrible codebase. horrible not because bad developers are working on it. horrible because of historical reasons. but neovim is actually in the process of doing what everyone said nobody could do.
He specifically said: "...if that's the case for vim, which is what people seem to mean these days when they talk about vi"
He didn't say it was vim. You took it as your opportunity to express your Opinion, since he mentioned something you care about, but just look like the kid in class raising his hand as high as he can yelling "Me! Me! Pick me!".
OTOH I don't know if that's the case for vim, which is what people seem to mean these days when they talk about vi.