I would classify myself as a vim power user and I agree with this take.
I think I'm probably equally as productive as a person that really knows their editor of choice. The productivity benefits mostly just come from knowing what things your editor is capable of.
However, I subjectively feel a twinge of frustration whenever I need to take my hands off the keyboard to reach for a mouse. So using vim makes a massive impact on my day to day wellbeing.
Ya, any carpal tunnel-type problems I was experiencing went away when I became proficient at Vim. I've never thought much about the productivity gains... I'm generally slow anyway, ha. But not having to move my hands away from the homerow much or reach for the mouse ever is important, and beneficial, to me.
As a long-time vim user I admit this is probably true compared to modern IDEs/editors in the majority of developer workflows today. On the other hand though, if I'm logging into random servers and manipulating any kind of text, especially over a low-bandwidth, high latency connection, I'll make a VSCode user look like a kindergartner who hasn't learn to hold a pencil yet.
When I'm repeating something in a non-vim environment, it feels incredibly tedious to actually have to do the steps repeatedly instead of just pressing .
I don't care about the productivity, I do care about not doing tedious things.
I've worked with many productive people and the speed they write code at never was a big factor. The first thing you should optimize for is the speed you read code at, that makes a big difference, so look for tools or IDE's that helps you explore and read code faster. Debuggers, jump to reference, lookup usages of symbols and so on are all very important things to have.
The time spent doing input is a tiny fraction of time spent coding, yes. However, it is all wasted time, and reducing it leaves more time free for thinking.
There are many syntax-aware vim verbs (ci[ or ci” for example) that save a lot of time and let me get back faster to thinking about the what and not the how. Too much time on the how and my ADD kicks in, sure as someone walking into my office and trying to talk to me.
As someone who is a midelevel vimmer and has been using it for 20 years, that's probably true. But the muscle memory is there, and it's standard everywhere. I do get a lot of leverage out of macros and text objects, features which I'm sure have equivalents in IDEs and other editors, but I know how to use them in vim.
Hotkeys with VS code can me made mostly the same right especially with Vim mode? I like the flexibility most. Little time when switching between projects or languages because it’s always Zellij, one or more nvims and a shell and ripgrep. It just feels the most comfortable at this point and it’s nice that it’s small and flexible instead of one big IDE. But yes probably people in other IDE‘s can be just as fast.
Crazy hotkey sequences, yes. Basic sequences like ci"foobar or /foo<enter>dwn... are a pretty great user experience - although it's true that your editing speed rarely determines the success or failure of the company.
I suspect this is the case, but have no hard evidence. I can see how being proficient at vim makes it feel gamified though - a clever series of commands resulting in a code change giving people that hit of dopamine.
I think I'm probably equally as productive as a person that really knows their editor of choice. The productivity benefits mostly just come from knowing what things your editor is capable of.
However, I subjectively feel a twinge of frustration whenever I need to take my hands off the keyboard to reach for a mouse. So using vim makes a massive impact on my day to day wellbeing.