[JulianWasTaken]

No. It didn't. The first editors were not modal.

And no, universally agreed upon better things did not evolve afterwards. I have no idea what the numbers are, but Vim is immensely popular amongst developers and I would highly suspect more popular amongst experienced developers than any editor whose name isn't emacs.

You are deluding yourself if you think that the modern world uses modal editors because their ancestors had keyboards that were too cramped.