[roveo]

It's not about typing speed, it's about reducing mental load. When vim (or any editor for that matter) becomes second nature, you stop thinking about how you're editing the text, it just happens, like moving a part of you body. And then you can better concentrate on the problem at hand, which matters even more for solving novel problems/algos/architecture.

Same with touch typing: you don't need the speed, you need to eliminate the distraction of looking for a key.

Even when you're debugging/reading code, you're still making small changes: adding a print here, removing an argument there. I read somewhere that the main insight behind creating vim was that you spend more time moving your cursor and parts of code around than you spend writing new code. So that's what it optimises for.

[0x008]

Well I guess then it is different for each person what induces mental load. I for one sometimes just use my mouse to click and copy things or insert a character here and there or to go to some other line. Why? Because I can think about the next problem while I do that because I don’t have to think about any keystrokes.