[intractable]

    > underline an arbitrary line of text with '=' characters. In vim that's 11 keypresses across 3 operations

Sounds like a vimgolf challenge to me. Here's my entry:

YpVr=

[swah]

I'm wondering now that the creativity to come up with those things might actually be beneficial to coding.

[danielbarla]

I'd agree with that, and also - an intense dislike of unnecessary repetition / work is definitely a good thing. I'm not sure using Vim causes that, but it definitely reinforces it.

For those that are interested, I would recommend "Practical Vim", and it includes many examples (including the above one) which really accelerate the learning process:

http://pragprog.com/book/dnvim/practical-vim

There are definitely cheaper alternatives (including free ones), but this book really laid the concepts out very clearly for me.

[regularfry]

Well, that Vr= soundly beats my :s/./=/g.