I was talking about facedots/thick edges…
But regarding the modal tools, people use it because they had no other choice. Blender never had active tools before. Everyone uses it because that is what was available in blender, all the tuts and docs are teaching it. How could it be different? There was no other way of using blender. This is what they learned from previous versions, and as you may know, it’s not easy to abandon bad habits. (similar to the right click select madness) 
you’re predictable … I was expecting this kind of answer :))
the video that I have linked is from a guy who a couple of years ago (therefore relatively new) went from maya to blender and made a video that explains the reasons …
youtube is full of such cases …
the fear of the rightclick select, is more a metropolitan legend than a concrete fact … and this is because after 3-4 days of practice people get used to and see the real advantages of the blender action approach …
so it’s just an excuse for those who have no patience to extend their ways of acting. (I’m one that I have had to come to other ways of using other software, but I have never complained, I have extended my actions and stop)
I don’t speak english, therefore I try to find the quickest way to say things.
But no, the only reason people are still using RCS/modal stuff is solely because of the tuts, nothing more. Everything else is BS.
The modal operators were one of the things that made me modeling faster in three weeks with limited tools (2.46 was not 2.79 in amount of tools) than seven years working in a studio with 3dsmax and all its tool set.
the right click to select and the ctrl+left click to lasso select plus emulate 3 mouse button help me a lot to use fluently the wacom stylus to work, thing that i have been using for work since 2010 (mouse its for games :3 ).
One example of active tool being clunkier and slower today its the “Annotation tool” it reach its peak of productivity for modeling assistance in 2013 when edit mode was added, now it requires changing tool to do a simple guide or erase and its not longer possible to edit to move the draw because that functionality was reserved for Grease pencil, great tool, but no longer practical to go back and forward fast and easy during modeling sessions.
And to put it into context when i learned blender there was barely any tutorial, didn’t know any community that support me and over that i had the people working with me telling me why i didn’t go to Maya or stay into max, so the right click and modal “madness” can’t be that difficult to get into, but the user mind to be open an learn new things that are potentially better, well that its other discussion
You like it, fine, no problem with that. I’m all about active tools.
But there’s a big problem regarding active tools in blender, they didn’t reached it’s full potential yet, because there’s still a weird mix of active tools and modal tools, mostly related to shortcuts and menus. Like, there’s no way to use the default shortcuts to call active tools. The tools in the context menus are not active tools etc… All of this makes using the active tools much slower than it should be.
So like someone suggested, blender needs a preference setting to toggle modal tools on/off. That would be a game changer.
I have to agree with that, as a user of modal operators(true Blender way), im loosing some really usefull funtionality as mentioned above, if i put myself in the head of a max after effect user, not being able to box select in the curve editor or move the timeline with the left click its extremely confusing.
Being able to separate the working methods also would spare a lot of discussions.
Basically, the same why people use active tools in other apps, because they don’t have other choice.
When you try modal tools, you don’t go back if you are a profesional.
You must be kidding.
It’s what I think every time I see someone trying to turn blender into Maya or Max because they just don’t care about doing things better and just want the usual, no matter how bad it is.
It’s not about turning blender into something else, it’s about getting rid of deprecated and convoluted workflows.
Fake user, I’m looking at you
I have come to the conclusion that you like like trolling …
there is no other explanation 
when there are some strange crap on blender, we are the first to make them obvious, but you have to go fanculo that the modal modeling is obsolete …
it’s you who have never used it and you have no idea of its potential,
of course we must use both hands, otherwise you do not see it functional … and this probably implies that you have to use both hemispheres of the brain 
Okay. That’s enough.
Have fun.
came on man, I’m kidding
Of course, and that deprecated workflows are decided by newbies that only want to copy the deprecated workflows of other programs. [/irony]
I remember when a few newbies ask for the max way to edit materials in cycles. With a windows and a grid of materials. When it’s some of the worst parts of max.
Fake user for my is a good way to work, but need some polish in the UX part.
Why couldn’t there just be a setting in the shortcut window to set a specific tool to activate only while the shortcut is pressed? That would let users choose which type of actions they like best.
I’d like this; Photoshop does it and it’s extremely useful when you need to quickly switch briefly to a different tool
Edit: Mentioning what Awk said about switching to a specific tool only while the keyboard shortcut is pressed.