In which case, I've won!

Seriously though, I think you were probably lucky to have experienced zsh that way. The out of the box experience is incredibly bare. Said as a fellow oh-my-zsh user going back the full twelve years, according to the history of oh-my-zsh's jnrowe theme ;)

I do believe there is a lot of useful knowledge to be gained from working back towards zsh first principles though, especially if -- like me -- you spend hours a day alongside the prompt.