I think you still need to be comfortable with basic vi commands as it is _the_ standard editor in Unix. Many a times I've found myself in situations when I had to quick-edit a config file on a new bare-bones server with only vi installed.

As for the quick Emacs workalikes - they are exotic and you can't always be expected to know the packaging commands of the odd Unix system you happen to be working with. And sometimes installing new packages is not an option.