[chongli]

I must be weird or something but I've gone back and forth between vim and emacs for years before finally settling on just vi (Keith Bostic's nvi, to be exact).

I've spent countless hours reading about and installing plugins on both of those big editors instead of just getting work done. Now that I just use vi, I realize how little of that stuff I need and how much I can get done with just macros and ! (the shell out command).

[JoshTriplett]

I've encountered several quite painful behaviors of traditional vi that vim fixes. For instance, with traditional vi, if you start out changing a region, you can't move or change text outside that region without exiting insert mode.

[chongli]

I actually like that feature. I try to stay out of insert mode as much as possible. This feature lets me mash C-w or even C-u without worrying about changing text outside the original scope of my edit. I use the c command to change text inside of an html tag (for example) and I like that this protects me from damaging the tag itself.

[Annatar]

That's the way vi is supposed to work, since it is based on the paradigm of a modal editor.

I learned vi in vi on UNIX, so the modal way stuck and I can glide and float between vi on UNIX and vim on Linux without getting busted on trying to move with cursor keys. I see Windows/Linux users get busted on that a lot, because they didn't install UNIX at home and learned on that first. It's frustrating to watch them get busted by that in person, over and over again.