I doubt I'll ever be a heavy vim user because it just doesn't fit my brain well, but this video is an example of why I have great respect for people who have truly mastered vim and can use it quickly and effectively. The rapid click-clack of the keyboard--as he pounds out commands as fast as he can think them up--is the same familiar sound I remember from vim experts I've known in the past.

Here is an emacs function I use, which does the reverse of the refactoring in the screencast. I use it by marking an expression and typing M-x extract-variable, which asks me what I want to call the variable. It then replaces the expression with the variable I named and puts "<varname> = <expression>" into the kill buffer. I navigate to where I want to define the variable and type C-y to yank, which completes the refactoring. It's a useful tool for breaking apart deeply nested code, pulling out constants to make things configurable, and improving the readability of long lines.

    (defun extract-variable ()
      "Micro-refactoring: replace the region with a variable and save an
    assignment statement in the kill ring. After calling this function, find a
    good destination for the assignment and yank."
      (interactive)
      (let ((var-name (read-string "Variable name: ")))
        (kill-region (region-beginning) (region-end))
        (kill-append " = " t)
        (kill-append var-name t)
        (unless (eq major-mode 'python-mode)
          (kill-append ";" nil))
        (insert var-name)))