Vi is well loved for it's power by those that have taken the time to master it. Nano has very limited function, it's few commands displayed at the bottom of the screen, making it more approachable by those not familiar with a text editor or the command line environment. I recommend nano when giving help to noobies editing configuration files or creating short shell scripts. In these cases my focus is on keeping things simple to insure their success. IMHO I wouldn't call nano better but in some instances more appropriate to the task and ability of the user.