Isn't that a different issue?Seems to me everything discussed so far is a case of wanting the shell to "do what I mean" without having to explicitly tell it how.
Interesting perspective. I'd say the exact opposite. The shell should not presume to know what you mean without explicit instruction. Mind ... there can of course be defaults, like 'bindkey -e' I think everyone agrees would be the default. But if I want vi bindings I hafta be explicit about that -- no extrapolations from EDITOR or anything else. There should be exactly one way to make that change because only one way is needed. My smartphone drives me mental, it's always trying to be helpful whether I want the help or not. So it changes things that I don't want changed and God knows how to change them back. But, with something as powerful as zsh, asking for 'simplicity' is always going to be a bit naive, naturally. My perspective is hardly the only one.