I've never experienced any of these problems.
vi always works for me and has done since about 1997.
This would be because you don't expect to navigate around vi with arrow keys when you're in insert mode.
[Although I've tested this on openbsd this morning, and even that seems to be supported now - a shame, it promotes bad habits.]
I'd guess that (like me) guard of tera came to unix via a redhat derivative, and developed all sorts of bad habits there which makes the transition to other unixes more difficult.
For me, this is a major reason for the success of linux with young developers - it makes some things easy and friendly, but in doing so locks you in to expectations that stymie your development. Not unlike Microsoft Word.
Coloured "ls" is one of those things that is
absolutely entirely useless if you actually know
how to use ls.
I think you nailed it there. Some background which backs up your assertions:
I use hjkl for navigation in vi as it's the lowest common denominator. It's always there. I use vim these days (with syntax highlighting!), but I barely get past the basic "classic vi" command set.
I came from a VMS, RISCiX, SunOS and Solaris background and I generally tend not to use conveniences that often. I'm mindful with respect to portability having had to move code from HPUX en-masse which wasn't fun. The plus side is scripts that I wrote in 1994 still work fine :-)
I'm not a fan of easy - only a fan of simple, elegant and right.
[Although I've tested this on openbsd this morning, and even that seems to be supported now - a shame, it promotes bad habits.]
I'd guess that (like me) guard of tera came to unix via a redhat derivative, and developed all sorts of bad habits there which makes the transition to other unixes more difficult.
For me, this is a major reason for the success of linux with young developers - it makes some things easy and friendly, but in doing so locks you in to expectations that stymie your development. Not unlike Microsoft Word.
Another example of the same dynamic.