Your examples of automation are all possible with multi-cursor edits as well. To me it's exactly the right mental model - I can do mass edits with the same commands I've learned in single cursor edits, and, maybe more importantly, I have immediate visual feedback between the edits I compose this way. I'd recommend anyone thinking about learning Vim to give this a try first and then evaluate whether there is any additional benefit from spending a lot of time learning Vim commands.
