Problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi (2009)

That StackOverflow comment is really good for grokking the zen of vi(m).

Those new to vi / vim, hit the ground running with my short vi quickstart tutorial here:

https://gumroad.com/l/vi_quick

I first wrote that tutorial at the request of a couple of Windows system admin friends of mine (at a company where I worked earlier), who were tasked with managing a few Unix boxes, without knowing Unix. They used the tutorial and later told me that it helped them to quickly start using vi to do their work on those boxes, including editing config files, simple shell scripts, etc.

Since vi is mostly a subset of vim, the tutorial works for vim too.

This is really good as a stepping stone to being productive in Emacs with Evil-mode. All the goodness of vi and vim motions with the amazing ecosystem of things like company, embark, magit, and more.

Vim's (or maybe this is was already a vi feature?) normal mode `.` alone (repeat the last operation) has saved me an infinite amount of time.

I assume the link was supposed to be to this specific answer, as that's where the quote in the title comes from: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118/1618406

The remarkable thing about vim is that it isn’t an IDE. The expression of actions on conceptually meaningful segments of text is just general enough to get most of the editing functionality of an IDE for free. Magic!