I think you should give it a try, even though that Shift+Arrow selecting seems to be one of your highest priorities. In nano, you would use Ctrl+A to initiate selection mode, so you don't even have to keep Shift pushed down all the time! And you can always use the Ctrl+Shift+X etc. shortcuts that your terminal provides. As you might have recognized, I am quite happy with nano, possibly partly due to being a former Windows user.