It’s one thing to learn a few gestures that work consistently across the platform. But every app tends to do its own thing, and even if you are a power user of the respective apps and learn their idiosyncrasies, it’s still annoying that they all work in slightly or sometimes drastically different ways, and that they aren’t consistent in terms of discoverability.

That was the point of the article. Users with knowledge of how it works can do it fine, but new users can't.

Your average dev who's never used vim or vi will start frustrated by default.

“Once you’ve learned the tool”

I don’t have time to learn the tool. I want to use the tool immediately. Otherwise, I’m moving on.

Configurable options are certainly a good approach for those that know the tool well, but the default state shouldn’t require “learning.”