Christ, am I the only person getting sick of the unending Vim evangelism here? It's a good editor, I use it a lot. So, apparently does the rest of HN, because not a day goes by without some Vim evangelism blog post on the front page. Is it really so terrible if there are a few holdouts on HN using Emacs or whatever? Does it truly destroy your life?
As a new vim user, I've found that learning vim is like learning to play an instrument.<p>You are constantly challenging yourself to move your hands and fingers in the most efficient way possible. It is incredibly frustrating up front but then you occasionally find yourself elevated and doing something that you had previously thought impossible.<p>Single key commands strung together make a melody. Editing a document is like playing a song.<p>Great vim practitioners can elegantly keep tempo and flow with advanced technique and focus.
One reason that sounds silly, but is totally legitimate- When your Vim-fu finally gets better than your regular text editor-fu, it FEELS great, and its FUN.
The same reason for using any editor: it helps you get things done. Other editors also help you get things done. A lot of these "You should use VIM because of x, y, and z" posts seem to follow a standard pattern: claim that VIM is good, give examples of "how easy!" it is to delete or paste text, show some advanced features ("ooh, macros!"), and then claim that it's the best editor. It's a good editor – I use it, too – but any editor that lets you be as productive is just as good.