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Why do you have the same 10 characters on 10 consecutive lines? Sounds like that is probably a violation of DRY, at least it always has been when I encountered something like that. Also, if you are comparing vi(m) to something, please don't compare it to notepad. Every editor and IDE I have used in the past few years has rectangular selection. Commonly with alt+click and drag, or shift+alt+arrow keys.

There are lots of scenarios when this comes up:

- braindead configuaration files. - data files that need some massaging - commenting out code blocks in languages which need a prefix comment delimiter on each line (e.g. python's # or haskell's --) - any time you are doing a series of operations calling functions in a module or from a single class/object and the name changes (e.g. foo.x();, foo.y(); foo.z(); and so on);

OK, I can potentially see where vi(m)'s rectangluar selection would be good for editing config files and such, but I'm pretty sure all modern editors have rectangular selection anyway (notepad is not a modern editor). My IDE has the ability to rename a variable and to comment/uncomment a selection which solves your last two problems.

I wasn't defending vim over your editor, just answering the question of when there are valid times to do 10 lines of block change. 2 more that came up for me yesterday:

We changed the data format being sent over JSON now I needed to:

1) make a bunch of int declarations into float declarations, fortunately those tend to bunch up.

2) Change a bunch of getInt calls to getFloat calls, but those are also bunched up together.

In a dumb Editor:

  1. Ctrl-shift-Right to select (1 or 3)
  2. Ctrl-C copy (1 or 2)
  3. Ctrl-H Open replace dialog box (1 or 2)
  4. Ctrl-V Paste the old (1 or 2)
  5. Tab (1)
  6. A_NEW_WORD (10)
  7. Enter (1)
  8. Replace (1) x10 (or Tab + replaceAll == 2)
  9. Escape (1)
  -------------
  Total 27 or 32
  That >80% Better.

On an intelligent IDE:

  1. Right Click Key (1)
  2. R - to choose refactor (1)
  3. R - Rename (1)
  4. A_NEW_WORD (10)
  5. Enter (1)
  ----------------
  Total: 14

I still want to learn Vim, because I somehow find it 'artistic'. There is some inherent beauty in Vi that I would love to be a part of. Unfortunately, the learning curve is fairly steep and the fear of losing productivity for 2 weeks is too huge. I still use vi for small changes, but for coding I find eclipse a more useful tool.

There's another giant advantage to renaming in an IDE over a text editor: You can be sure not to clobber any other variable/method references.

Here's an example, I want to change the name of my MyClass.Execute() method to something more descriptive. In an IDE, I right click and rename and I'm done.

In vim or other plaintext editors this is practically impossible without manually inspecting each call-site. Is "foo.Execute()" a reference to MyClass.Execute() or YourOtherClass.Execute()? Without actually parsing the program it's tough to know.

I love using vim, and I'm getting better at it the more I use it, but this is one of the major productivity drains I encounter that an IDE does way better.

You forgot to take the conversion rate between clicks and keystrokes into account.

  c = (k.d.t.r) / 13333337

  Where:
    c = click
    k = keystroke
    d = distance in centimeters between the "J" key and mouse
    t = area to be clicked in pixels²
    r = screen resolution in pixels²

There are no clicks, the Right Click Key on keyboard is just too awesome! :)

> Ctrl-V e 1 0 j c A_NEW_WORD

Another approach is something like:

    *:.,+9s/<ctrl-r>//A_NEW_WORD

But alas, that's 21 keystrokes.

(I post this now because it was closer to my first thought on how to approach the problem, and wanted to write it out to see if it was shorter. It wasn't, but maybe it'll be useful to someone. I learned about <ctrl-r>/ (fills in a search and replace with the previously searched expression), while writing it.