I still don't know if investing time in becoming really good at vi/vim is a genuine huge optimization, or a much smaller micro-optimization.
For example, going from hunt-and-peck to touch-typing is a huge noticeable optimization and totally worth it (in my opinion). Even if the learning process is not fun, you'll get enough out of it that you should do it.
Going from QWERTY to Dvorak, on the other hand, is less of a noticeable leap. You should do it if you'll enjoy the process, but the advantages aren't so big and so noticable that you should force yourself if it's not fun.
So, my question to people who are pretty regular with VI/VIM now, would you say the benefits are closer to moving from hunt-and-peck to touch-type, or from going from QWERTY to Dvorak?
IMO the benefits are huge, I'm not on Dvorak, partly because I'm on Vim (there is a remapping scheme for Vim with Dvorak users).
One thing I love about Vim is not only do you never need the mouse, you don't even need the arrow keys, everything is designed around keeping your fingers on the homerow.
Vim is bigger than just a text editor, it's a concept.
Sure there is a learning curve, but Vim is on a whole other level, it utilizes text objects, which help me see text as a series of objects to be manipulated rather than text that I'm traversing.
I'm a huge fan of Vim, so much so I have a hackernews Vim bot on twitter which is how I found this post.
As a recent Vim user, I used to roll my eyes at people who were so dedicated to it, but I'm quickly coming around. There are still some quirks I haven't gotten used to however, the biggest one being the emphasis on keeping your fingers on the homerow, but at the same time having a heavy reliance on the Esc key, which breaks the homerow policy.
I highly recommend remapping 'jk' to escape, it's great cause if you are already escaped thus in Normal mode, jk just goes down and up a line. "jj" is also one I see that gets used a lot.
For editing text, the difference between vim and a plain editor is much bigger than hunt-and-peck to touch typing. Depending on what you're editing, there may be other tools that will make a similar difference.
For example, going from hunt-and-peck to touch-typing is a huge noticeable optimization and totally worth it (in my opinion). Even if the learning process is not fun, you'll get enough out of it that you should do it.
Going from QWERTY to Dvorak, on the other hand, is less of a noticeable leap. You should do it if you'll enjoy the process, but the advantages aren't so big and so noticable that you should force yourself if it's not fun.
So, my question to people who are pretty regular with VI/VIM now, would you say the benefits are closer to moving from hunt-and-peck to touch-type, or from going from QWERTY to Dvorak?