I’ve been a long time vim user, and I honestly never really bought into the efficiency claims. That gets repeated over and over, but If you’re a slow typer then no editor can really make much of a difference.
Little by little your movements become more complex and efficient, and the journey to figuring that out is fun and interesting.
It’s just fun, and I don’t think that gets talked about enough
vi definitely doesn't scratch that "itch" for everyone in the same way. But for me, it's as though I found a cheat code. Getting better at vi feels like getting better at a game - only practicing this game makes you better at any number of tasks that are relevant to your daily work.
(although if you also want to get better at typing speed, there are surprisingly fun roguelikes on Steam for just this purpose)
> practicing this game makes you better at any number of tasks that are relevant to your daily work.
Vi key bindings don't apply outside of vi
That's not true at all. Many readline and terminal based clients support vi bindings, you just have to enable them. e.g. stuff like psql.
The shells themselves also support vi binding.
Outside of the terminal tools like Vimium add support to browsers and many other interfaces.
I learned vi key bindings in rogue, hack, and moria (before numpads were common for that binding to be default) before I learned them in vi.
Thankfully my work applies inside vi.