Vim was never about typing efficiency. However, it is indeed the best way to navigate and edit text. This statement is very subjective because, just like any tool, it depends on the user. Chainsaw looks ugly, heavy, cumbersome and dangerous to someone who doesn't know how to use it. But with some practice it becomes an incredibly efficient tool. People make ice sculptures using chainsaws.
And I'm not talking about Vim the editor. I'm talking about Vim as an idea. Which is today implemented for pretty much every single [popular] editor and IDE in use. That fact alone is pretty illustrative of awesomeness of the idea of Vim.
And the comment about Emacs is quite disingenuous. I have never been inside a Formula One cockpit, but I can totally get "the job done" with my Camry, because it is totally more efficient for parallel parking.
I have used many IDEs, including InteliJ (which I used for about seven years). Emacs wins solely by its extensibility, no editor/IDE has ever matched its capabilities. For some people that is not an important factor, just like the efficient parallel parking might not be important for Formula One pilots. But when you can automate pretty much anything it feels very empowering and liberating.
Small example: when I'm about the create a new commit, an emacs-lisp script can figure out the current ticket I'm working on (based on currently clocked Org-mode task), generate a branch name based on the ticket description, generate part of the commit message (in the way that it is in compliance with git tool like gommit), I would just have to type the rest of the message.
That is not only more efficient, but also reduces frustration. Compare that with the workflow in any other editor and IDE - most of these steps will have to be manual. Then someone might say: oh there's actually a plugin for Editor X that does some of that stuff for Jira. But what if I join a different company that uses Pivotal Tracker instead? I can extend my emacs-lisp script. Whereas if that's an InteliJ plugin I would either have to go through daunting process of forking and modifying the plugin or submit a feature request and wait for something that may never happen.
And I'm not talking about Vim the editor. I'm talking about Vim as an idea. Which is today implemented for pretty much every single [popular] editor and IDE in use. That fact alone is pretty illustrative of awesomeness of the idea of Vim.
And the comment about Emacs is quite disingenuous. I have never been inside a Formula One cockpit, but I can totally get "the job done" with my Camry, because it is totally more efficient for parallel parking.
I have used many IDEs, including InteliJ (which I used for about seven years). Emacs wins solely by its extensibility, no editor/IDE has ever matched its capabilities. For some people that is not an important factor, just like the efficient parallel parking might not be important for Formula One pilots. But when you can automate pretty much anything it feels very empowering and liberating.
Small example: when I'm about the create a new commit, an emacs-lisp script can figure out the current ticket I'm working on (based on currently clocked Org-mode task), generate a branch name based on the ticket description, generate part of the commit message (in the way that it is in compliance with git tool like gommit), I would just have to type the rest of the message.
That is not only more efficient, but also reduces frustration. Compare that with the workflow in any other editor and IDE - most of these steps will have to be manual. Then someone might say: oh there's actually a plugin for Editor X that does some of that stuff for Jira. But what if I join a different company that uses Pivotal Tracker instead? I can extend my emacs-lisp script. Whereas if that's an InteliJ plugin I would either have to go through daunting process of forking and modifying the plugin or submit a feature request and wait for something that may never happen.