A similar argument is what finally caused the value of the vi family of editors to click in my brain:
They are designed to be fully functional over even the shittiest possible* remote connection. You can’t always count on ctrl, alt, or even the arrow keys being transmitted in a way that is understood by the remote machine.
*Well, I guess the worst possible terminal would be something like an actual teletype, and in that case you’d probably want to fall back to ed or its descendants. To save paper, if nothing else.