Almost every reason given in the comments in favor of vim is not mutually exclusive to vim nor mutually exclusive with other features in other editors. It's easy to find vim alternatives, including GUI applications, with these supposed great features - and more.
The most significant, real benefit is the ubiquity, and the ubiquity is a function of tradition, vim's size, and its portability. This leads to its use because its 'the only option, not because 'its the best (or even good) option'. There's no arguing against the benefits of the ubiquity; its on almost every device that runs linux or unix like OS.
What really separates vim from the real day-to-day competition is the abysmal usability. From the complete lack of visibility and discoverability to the numerous modes, vim is a hall-of-shame when it comes to UX and UI. The original post even points to this stack overflow question with 3k upvotes and a top answer of 5k upvotes asking simply 'how do I quit vim': https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11828270/how-do-i-exit-t...
I don't think it's fair to ask every user to read the man pages, read a book, take a class, or go through a tutorial on how to use vim. If most users can figure out notepad.exe or TextEdit.app without reading a manual or taking a class, I think it's fair to say vim loses the usability battle, regardless of how powerful of a text editor it is.
I find most evangelists of tools have jumped from some feature anemic tool (notepad.exe or notepad++) to a more powerful tool (like notepad++ or visual studio, respectively) and decided "theres no way anything is better" then plug their ears to hearing about better tools. Nothing could possibly beat the amazing tool they use now!
JetBrains tools are less ubiquitous than vim, and sure take up more disk space. But the usability and power, as far as I can tell as I am no vim expert, far exceed that of vim. If I'm going to pick a daily-use tool, it's not going to be the one so small it fits in the tiny memory of my router, I'm going to pick the tool that with the most utility.
The original article should simply say "In many cases, vim and emacs are your only two options. When you are forced into that corner, you better know at least one of those two tools. You should learn vim because it's the (just barely) easier to use of the two ubiquitous editors."
The most significant, real benefit is the ubiquity, and the ubiquity is a function of tradition, vim's size, and its portability. This leads to its use because its 'the only option, not because 'its the best (or even good) option'. There's no arguing against the benefits of the ubiquity; its on almost every device that runs linux or unix like OS.
What really separates vim from the real day-to-day competition is the abysmal usability. From the complete lack of visibility and discoverability to the numerous modes, vim is a hall-of-shame when it comes to UX and UI. The original post even points to this stack overflow question with 3k upvotes and a top answer of 5k upvotes asking simply 'how do I quit vim': https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11828270/how-do-i-exit-t...
I don't think it's fair to ask every user to read the man pages, read a book, take a class, or go through a tutorial on how to use vim. If most users can figure out notepad.exe or TextEdit.app without reading a manual or taking a class, I think it's fair to say vim loses the usability battle, regardless of how powerful of a text editor it is.
I find most evangelists of tools have jumped from some feature anemic tool (notepad.exe or notepad++) to a more powerful tool (like notepad++ or visual studio, respectively) and decided "theres no way anything is better" then plug their ears to hearing about better tools. Nothing could possibly beat the amazing tool they use now!
JetBrains tools are less ubiquitous than vim, and sure take up more disk space. But the usability and power, as far as I can tell as I am no vim expert, far exceed that of vim. If I'm going to pick a daily-use tool, it's not going to be the one so small it fits in the tiny memory of my router, I'm going to pick the tool that with the most utility.
The original article should simply say "In many cases, vim and emacs are your only two options. When you are forced into that corner, you better know at least one of those two tools. You should learn vim because it's the (just barely) easier to use of the two ubiquitous editors."