"nano" is an interesting creature - it was originally developed as a replacement for the "pico" command that shipped with "pine" (an amazing curses-based email client) because the license on pico was just not really clear.
I still use nano 50% of the time because it's so easy to jump into a file, make some quick changes, and jump out. Plus the mark/cut/paste keystrokes are seared into my memory after years of use.
I would recommend micro. It's simple like nano, but has full mouse support. The only real downside is that it's not installes by default.
So one day someone will write the improvement and call it milli, but then what? Is there a prefix for 10^0? Do these people not plan ahead?
Well, it seems we've already skipped to kilo[1], so it'll have to be mega.