[throwaway_au_1]

It sometimes seems like a lot of the Vim, ew crowd think that the sole reason for using Vim is gaining some kind of god-like ability to physically pump out and manipulate characters. Sure, maybe that's possible. For me, it's about being efficient with my keystrokes. Standard shortcuts (Ctrl+_) are pretty unpleasant for my hands - saying this having already mapped CAPS_LOCK to LEFT_CONTROL (and LEFT_CONTROL to ENTER). I like running commands using sequences of letters - it just feels physically easier to me than sequences of multi-key-presses (e.g. Ctrl+Shift+T). That Vim has other smarts around that is just a perk.

Editing text using Vim, once you've built the muscle memory, really feels super natural and effortless. I really hate reaching for the mouse; it just irks me in a way that's hard to describe. Similarly, editing code without Vim feels tedious in a similar way. Imagine scrolling a long article by pressing the down arrow over and over, or clicking the down button at the bottom of the scroll bar.

Another complaint I see is that remembering the commands is too hard an ask. I moved from QWERTY to Workman at the same time that I was learning Vim and it was interesting because I learned that I -- and probably most people, but I'm speculating -- don't associate commands or actions with letters after they're initially learned. It's all muscle memory, just particular movements of select fingers. The Vim stuff you use day-in-day-out just sticks in your brain and you don't think about anymore than you think about which fingers to activate to type words.

Of course, some people probably just prefer to edit text like they do in almost all other text-editing contexts. They can already edit text; without some kind of perceived extra value, there's no motivation to change, or seemingly even try to understand an alternative. For me, it's the pleasure of feeling efficient and doing dev pain-free.

[fileeditview]

Yep there are many more reasons than "typing fast" for using Vim. For me the main motivator to dive into Vim was to not use the mouse at all because it constantly gave me RSI. It worked great. I never again had RSI since I switched to Vim for all my coding.

[ErikCorry]

I think part of the benefit of vim for RSI is that there's not much chording - pressing two keys at once.

When not using vim you often need control characters on the left hand. Ctrl-C Ctrl-V Ctrl-X Ctrl-A are all on the left. Also, for bash, Ctrl-R and Ctrl-E. I've been training myself to use the right ctrl key for all these, because for some reason I was chording with the left hand.

I've also tried to learn to use caps lock for all-caps, but with less success.