Agreed — overwrite mode is something I basically never want and am always unhappily surprised to find it's switched on.
That's one of the things I like about using C-a, C-e, M-v & C-v, C-d instead of home, end, pgup, pgdn & Del — much less likely to accidentally hit the wrong key. And my hands don't have to fly so far from my keyboard!
Overwrite mode is basically a relic from the old fixed-width record days. We just need to think up a better use for the Insert key so people don't fall back on making it the overwrite toggle.
Maybe in a word processor it could bring up the "put a picture/graph/whatever" right here in this document?
That's one of the things I like about using C-a, C-e, M-v & C-v, C-d instead of home, end, pgup, pgdn & Del — much less likely to accidentally hit the wrong key. And my hands don't have to fly so far from my keyboard!