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While a tweaked configuration can be a great productivity boost, it has a major drawback. My main reason for using vim is its ubiquitousness. Whenever I need to ssh into a box to check something out, I can trust that it's there. However, I cannot trust that its configuration has been tweaked like I expect. Hence, I stay away from getting used to non-standard key mappings.

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Checking something out on some server does not require remapped keys or commands: you generally just browse some file and fix a couple of things. Tweaked configuration for more involved tasks is fine, to me.

I think this follows the 90/10 rule. Most of my work is on my own machine. Occasionally I will be on a server and attempt to use some configuration from my personal .vimrc but instead have to fall back to slightly slower methods.

The time lost in that 10% is totally worth the cost of the time saved in the 90%.

And since everyone uses their text editors differently, it's not practical to move any one individual's personal configuration choice into vim core.

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