I used evil for c++ dev and loved it. I never liked how it worked with paredit so I gave it up. In evil mode it's quite possible to delete part of a parenthesis, something that is nearly impossible to do in normal Emacs. The evil editing commands seem to take priority over the paredit rules

there's a setting that prevents it, but yeah, using x or deleting regions can cause issues. Though the region deleting I think is handled pretty well for me, even if you select parens or braces or whatever delimiters.

I've learned that God mode in emacs, an emacs-style modal editing mode, is a nice compromise. A lot of the benefits of evil without a heavy layer sitting on top, and still get fewer key chords.

And God mode always respects parens