[howaboutnope]

> It's more like someone at some point stops being open to change, which allows some breathing room, but eventually they'll prefer to stick to what they know rather than having to learn something new.

That could justify anything that is new. Just take the people who think nuclear would be a bad idea -- "it's just because that's not how they are used to doing things".

What is there to "learn" about, say, 50 pixels of padding rather than 5 pixels of padding and 1 pixel of border? All of these "arguments" are avoiding the actual subject matter at hand to make grand generalizations.

> It's entirely possible the text editor Kakoune would be even better than vim at doing the whole modal editor thing, but I do not care to find out.

Then speak for yourself, because none of that describes me. I constantly try out new things; some things supersede what I used to that point, others fall short.

> what color links should be and if that color is distinguishable is pretty subjective

Not in the case of two colors being the exact same. There is nothing subjective about that at all.