[padraigm]

As tikhonj mentioned, Emacs evil-mode is very likely exactly what you're looking for. I had considered myself a hardcore vim user, but I felt the call of Slime and org-mode. When I finally took a serious look at Emacs, I became convinced that Emacs with evil-mode is the ultimate editor for vim lovers.

[guns]

What concerns me about vim emulation modes is the uncanny valley mentioned by another poster. Working in a second-class interface doesn't sound that great.

However, that's pretty strong praise, so I promise I'll give it a shot before trying to birth a new editor into the world.

[aerique]

I've used Emacs for the last 10+ years first with my own custom keybindings and recently with keybindings with 'default' CUA bindings like you find them in almost any other modern application. Before I switched to Emacs I used vi/Vim for almost 10 years. Also, even when I had switched to Emacs I still used Vim on the commandline and on remote servers but not in any advanced way.

I tried out evil-mode a couple of weeks ago just on a lark and I am staying with it. You really get the best of both world[1] this way. It might be a little strange at times but I wouldn't describe the usage as a second-class interface. Just different. I'd rather describe the default Emacs keybindings as a second-class interface :-)

[1] this will not mean much if you've never used Emacs