Absolutely. 19 years of using vi/vim, and kak won me over in less than a week. One year later, still very happy with kak. Vim is great, but kak is better. Its source code is pretty exemplary, too, and I don't ordinarily have anything at all good to say about C++.

I wish it didn't use alt so much. I use alt it heavily in my i3 bindings.

Why not Mod4 AKA the Windows key?

I use it for i3 too.

Why not nano where all your questions are answered on the lower part of the screen?

nano is not a bad editor. It has a very straightforward learning curve but it is less featured and extensible.

kakoune has more features and high quality plug-ins than nano.

kakoune also interoperates better with tmux.

It's not bad but it's not powerful either.