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My primary issue with Vi and Emacs isn't really about lack. They are quite powerful tools. The primary problem is that they impose a certain amount of mental overhead. Emacs was a bit worse in that regard since many of its key bindings are actually sequences. Sublime Text is rather powerful but in terms of features it's probably the one that is lacking of the 3. The win was in unloading the overhead from my normal work patterns.

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I think that mental overhead is the steep learning curve that everyone talks about. I remember when I first started learning Emacs it was hard. I just had to think in this new way (I was used to cua style keystrokes), but after a month or so my muscle memory developed and I started not having to directly think about what I was doing. Once you get to that point, the overhead is gone and things become very nice.

But I'll grant you it's a hard sell to say "this is great, but you're going to be unproductive for a month". Nonetheless, I think the payout is very much worth it, and if you are interested, make sure you are prepared, and stick with it for a good long time before giving up.

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