[chongli]

The magic of vim is not really showcased when starting up a new, blank file in a new project. If that's all programmers did, we wouldn't need an editor at all: just cat > foo.c and start typing!

Where vim shines is with editing existing files. Sure, maybe your IDE has a great plugin (or great built-in support) for the specific language you're using in the project. But vim is excellent for editing any text file, no matter what language (or indeed no language at all), and its keys are always the same. If you become a vim master, you don't need language-specific support to be productive. Additionally, all of your knowledge of vim editing commands is transferrable to any kind of file you want to edit. Language-specific plugins, on the other hand, vary widely in capability, hotkey setup, and completeness.

So if all you do all day is work exclusively within a single language and you have your IDE perfectly set up for it, learning vim is going to feel like a waste of time. If, on the other hand, you find yourself extremely unproductive whenever you move to edit other kinds of files (and you need to do this a lot), then vim may be a worthwhile investment of your time.