> To those who would say "that's obvious; of course you learn vim incrementally", I would simply say that having spoken to a number of vim users in the past, I never got that advice. Instead, I got a lot of advice about turning off my arrow keys, disallowing the use of the mouse, and learning the (MORE EFFICIENT!!!) vim ways to do everything, all at once

Ugh, this.

Arrow keys have been invented for a reason, they're good and intuitive and there's absolutely nothing wrong with using them. Same with the mouse.

The "pure" VIM ways are more efficient than ed. They're maybe more efficient some 10% of times you actually need some specific thing. But they're not better than a visual editor.