I was about to yell in indignation "BUT WHAT ABOUT EMACS!" and then I finished reading the first sentence. Alas, it is true, emacs was not installed by default. I learned just enough vi to modify basic files in /etc on old school unices (Ultrix, SunOS, Solaris, HP/UX, IRIX, etc.)

And the weird thing is... to this day... when I edit something in /etc, I always use vi instead of emacs. It just seems sick and wrong to edit config files with anything else.