Having separate commands for creating/modifying selections and for editing their contents is more orthogonal. In kakoune, you can select a word, multiple words, multiple search results, a brace-delimited block, or an arbitrary sequence of characters (it's pretty common that I want to include a bit of whitespace, or instance), and the same 'c' command works on all of them. The same 'd', 'i', and 'a' commands also work on all of them. In straight-line editing it's no more keystrokes than vim, and hardly more than any other editor, but for complex operations it lets you tailor and preview them as you go. The thing that confuses me is why it would even be a debate that this is better.