My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about vim. All right, here is how I feel about vim:
If when you say vim you mean the antiquated relic, the impossibly-steep-learning-curve editor, the maddening modal machine, the most discouraging interface, which infuriates experienced users, confounds new users, and yea, literally takes the mouse from your hands and sets it on fire; if you mean the editor that takes every other editor and stomps them into the floor, shouting all the while, "I am better than you!" as you look on in total despair, then certainly I am against it.
But, if when you say vim you mean the savior of efficiency, the feature-complete friend, the wise teacher, the universal helper, that is there no matter what the task, that asks only for your patience in return for life-long skill, that teaches new lessons right when you think you have mastered it, that frees you from reliance on the IDE and says, "rely only on yourself"; if you mean the tool that becomes a personal, intimate companion to anyone who has the fortitude to let it, then certainly I am for it.
This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
I was thrown a bit when he say's "To code in Vim, you have to keep Vim in your head just as much as the code that you’re editing. You have to constantly think about what you’re doing." I have a few coworkers who work completely in vim while the rest of us use Visual Studio. I ask them questions about vim usage and usually they have to think a while about what they actually do because using vim is second nature to them.
I do not have to think about what I'm doing in vim, when it comes to normal text editing.
To be quite honest, getting up to normal-editor level with vim shouldn't take more than a month to become comfortable. Learning to move, yank, paste, and navigate windows is not hard and you really don't have to think about it.
More advanced usage I have to think about, but that's no different than if you had to think about what you were doing in sublime when you clicked search and replace and started typing in a regular expression.
If when you say vim you mean the antiquated relic, the impossibly-steep-learning-curve editor, the maddening modal machine, the most discouraging interface, which infuriates experienced users, confounds new users, and yea, literally takes the mouse from your hands and sets it on fire; if you mean the editor that takes every other editor and stomps them into the floor, shouting all the while, "I am better than you!" as you look on in total despair, then certainly I am against it.
But, if when you say vim you mean the savior of efficiency, the feature-complete friend, the wise teacher, the universal helper, that is there no matter what the task, that asks only for your patience in return for life-long skill, that teaches new lessons right when you think you have mastered it, that frees you from reliance on the IDE and says, "rely only on yourself"; if you mean the tool that becomes a personal, intimate companion to anyone who has the fortitude to let it, then certainly I am for it.
This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
(Borrowed from the "If-by-whiskey" speech, delivered by Noah Sweat in 1952. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey)