> [4] Or, emacs. Or, really, any other tool that you 1) use constantly; 2) is almost universally applicable; and, 3) makes you more productive.
Nice to see consideration for other tools in a piece like this.
I put VIM in the title because 1) it's got a recognizable identity to pull in readers and, 2) I use VIM. But, in a weird and almost recursive way, editor wars are kinda like language wars. If it gets you that 5% (or more) boost, great! But, the differences between them often washes out.
The had-I-learned-it-first concept is something I didn't mention, but do think is important. And, often it works in an inhibiting way. With an IDEA-like rich IDEs -- which I think is a great tool, esp with VIM bindings! -- you get such a boost from things like good contextual auto-complete, that you never feel the need to learn it more deeply.
But learning Vi is extremely useful, because many editors/IDEs feature a Vi Plugin:
Visual Studio, Qt, Eclipse, Xcode, Atom, IntelliJ and of course Emacs. Learning the basic Emacs shortcuts is likewise useful for terminal (though some shells also have a Vi mode!)