I really appreciate that he ends the page with links to other editors to consider, in case his doesn't fit someone's needs

Except the listing looks ancient and doesn't bring alternatives like this post's link. You don't use "sed" as a text editor.

Presumably that is because the page is ancient too

JOE is where I started my Unix editor journey, the Wordstar bindings were familiar coming from DOS and Borland tools. From there I went on to jed which also had Wordstar support and it gave me a taste for extensibility. Jed's native keybindings were based on Emacs though so I eventually arrived to the real deal and it has been Emacs ever since then. But also learned vi basics along the way of course. :)

Been using JOE in it’s jpico form for many years now.

What got me started was actually how much faster it is on a Raspberry Pi compared to nano.

I feel the same way, I use JOE's jstar mode because I fondly recall using Wordstar under CP/M, and it has enough features for basic editing.

> JOE's jstar

Is that an intentional reference to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or just a wonderful coincidence?

I don't know JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, I think it's a bizarre coincidence!

"JoJo" is short for "Joseph Joestar", the protagonist of that manga, so yes, that would definitely be a bizarrely fitting coincidence :D