[krautsourced]

But, on the other hand, sublime/atom/... will give you immediate visual feedback about what it is going to delete (the marked range), whereas "delete three words" can potentially be open to ambiguity (plus you have to count words in advance...). For example, some editors consider my-function() a word, others stop the word at the "-" etc.

I understand why in some cases the kind of low level power you get with editors like vi and emacs etc is of an advantage, and I use vi regularly myself for basic editing on remote shells, but I am more of a visual person and I much prefer the usability over power approach.

[178]

I couldn't have said it better. Also, I have yet to see a more compelling example of clever composition in vim than "delete 3 lines" (which even I do when rarely using vim).

[falcolas]

How about correct everything inside these parenthesis/brackets? Or indent everything within these brackets? Or do a search/replace over only the next paragraph? Or Title Case everything up to the next colon/semicolon/quote? Read the contents of file <x> into my current buffer? Format everything within these two matching quotes?

Every movement is composable with every action. There's a lot of movements, and a lot of actions. Delete three lines is the simplest possible command, but it's hardly the only one.