[thekiptxt]

What makes you think that having the focus on the search box vs the code area in VSC constitutes a different mode in the same way as vim normal vs insert modes? You haven’t explained what you consider a mode to be.

I think there is something very clearly different in vim, as first time users must have it explained to them that typing `j` when their cursor is at the start of the code area will do very different things depending on the mode they’re in. It’s a paradigm not present in editors like VSCode. This difference is usefully characterized as “modal”.