I find articles like this interesting, mainly because I went through a similar transition (IDE => Sublime => vim). However, my story stopped at vim.
For this particular article, I think what strikes me as odd is:
use[ing] the keyboard is slower for some selection tasks like selecting a range of text far from the cursor than the mouse is
This is...precisely the opposite of my experience. I find navigation and selection to be the most powerful aspects of vim. I never felt like I "got" vim until I understood this, in fact. I constantly questioned if the investment of time was worth it. That being said, if you don't grok this I could see how it would be defeating. You eventually reach a point where you forget the mouse is even an option though.
My only other comment is in regard to his mention of issues with tabs. I'm curious what we were doing so differently, because that's never once been a problem for me, even in early days (however I could see how it would be super annoying).
I'm of the mind that it doesn't matter what you use as long as you're being productive, but it's also neat to see what path other people walk down.
I use vim from time to time, when hacking stuff on my server. I often hear people say it's the best editor.
Could you tell me; don't you miss a mouse? Or a scrollwheel? Or alt-tabbing? Do you use a project panel wher you can see your files? Do you browse that with your keyboard?
I use vim and don't miss the mouse; I don't even have a scroll wheel (I much prefer a proper old fashioned 3-button mouse with a proper middle button).
A tags file and ^] and ^t to navigate is faster than file browsing and scrolling around. * and # to quickly jump between instances of the same token. ^6 to quick swap between buffers, and ^o and ^i to quickly jump back and forth between locations I've visited.
Fast cursor movement using b, w, {, }, /search, [[, ]], is also much faster than mousing around or slowly navigating using arrow keys.
Scrolling is done by ^e and ^y, and zz to center on the cursor. Faster than a scroll wheel.
And don't forget the almighty '.'. To quickly replace a variable name, stand on the variable, hit * to search for it and remember the search. Then 'cw' to change a word, type the new name, hit escape. Then 'n.' to find the next instance and repeat the edit.
Could you tell me; don't you miss a mouse? Or a scrollwheel? Or alt-tabbing? Do you use a project panel wher you can see your files? Do you browse that with your keyboard?
I don't miss the mouse or scrollwheel at all when using vim. HJKL, as nice as it is, is probably the least efficient way to navigate code with vim. You're much better off navigating by word or by using / to just search for where you want to go. Having regex search just a single keypress away is amazingly powerful once you start really using it.
As far as alt-tabbing goes, I'm not sure what you mean. I alt-tab in and out of vim all the time. If you're having trouble with that, then perhaps something is wrong with your vim configuration.
I do not use a project panel to browse my files. That's IDE thinking. Vim is a text editor, not an IDE. Unix itself is the IDE. If you want to browse/navigate files, you should be using the shell, not vim. If you want you file browser and your text editor in the same window, you should be using screen, or tmux, rather than hacking additional panes onto vim.
I suspect your problem is that you're not using vim enough. Learning vim is much more like learning a musical instrument than it is like learning a programming language. You can't expect to master the piano if you only play one hour a month. Similarly you can't expect to master vim if you only use it to edit the odd config file on your server.
I've been using Vim for a long time. I'm a sort of Vim heretic, I'd say. In that I'm mostly touch typing but I don't do the whole "fingers on the home row" or even GASP I don't navigate using hjkl. I've played too many games using the arrow keys or awsd to switch to some sort of weird in-line configuration of that.
Anyway:
1. Mouse - you can use your mouse with Vim.
set mouse=a
vmap <C-c> "+y
vmap <C-x> "+x
vmap <C-v> "+gP
There you go. Mouse actions + Ctrl-V Ctrl-C/X/V for easy copy-paste.
2. Scrollwheel - you can enable the scroll wheel, I can't test right now but I'm pretty sure you can use it. I move around more by Page Up/Page Down (another Vim heresy!) or by searching (a ton more common).
3. You can Alt-Tab using Vim. Just use Gvim. Or did you mean switching tabs with Ctrl-Tab? There you go:
map <C-Tab> <Esc>:tabnext<CR>
map <C-S-Tab> <Esc>:tabprevious<CR>
4. There's quite a few plugins for that. NerdTree, for example.
Anyway, don't feel forced to use Vim. I use it because it's cross platform, free and I'm used to it. But don't drink the KoolAid. It's not some magical weapon. Especially if your mental model doesn't match its model. For example in my case it matches only partially (see the whole arrow keys, copy-paste, mouse usage, etc.). But I still use it because I like the modal editing and to be honest, I think that for me command mode/ex mode is what keeps me using it. :s, :g, :tabnew & co. are too darn useful.
You've already gotten some good answers while I was finishing my coffee, but here goes anyway.
The only time I miss a mouse is when I want to fire up a game that actually runs on my Mac (Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, etc.). I'd say the main reason I don't miss a mouse in vim is because I don't use a mouse anywhere else on my Mac. On a fresh format I create 4 desktops, and I bind CMD+1-4 to switch between these. Whenever I want to launch chrome/term/mail/whatever I use CMD+space and launch it directly from Spotlight. I use Magnet (http://magnet.crowdcafe.com - no affiliation, just a fan) to maximize/minimize/layout windows without having to use the _remarkably awful_ Mac window management UI.
While within vim I don't miss a scroll-wheel because bouncing around with / and ? is just so, so, so much faster. I really cannot stress enough how slow it now feels to scroll up and down a file searching for a specific string when I'm forced to do so. It's maddening for me now.
Your question re: a project panel, etc, is probably the best one. I think I may be an outlier here. I don't use NERDtree, but a lot (most, in fact) of my friends who use vim do. There are really two use cases for opening a file - direct from the term or in concert with an already open file. I typically know the structure of a project so I can just cd around or vim right/to/the/file.js If I'm already editing something I'll usually just :vsp to/the/other/file.erb or if I'm really lost as to where I am or where I'm trying to go I'll just CTRL+Z back to the term, cd & ag around until I find myself, fg back to vim, then :vsp to/where/I/now/know/Im/going.scss
I suspect if I actually spent the time to learn NERDtree I may be able to get around unknown projects better, but I've always felt pretty good about my workflow so I've just never committed to it.
As the GP alludes to, the key insight to becoming productive in VIM is the power of the movement system. To (mis)quote Gary Bernhardt, the slowest thing you can do is read something to find where you want to be. Searching is better, and better still is being able to just go straight to the place you want to go, even if it's in another file.
If you're using a file tree, you are probably doing it wrong. Instead, get used to tools like Command-T and the :vim command. Also set incsesrch and hlsearch. Once you learn how these things work, start making a conscious effort to play a bit of vim golf to get to where you're looking to be in as few keystrokes as possible. It's a bit painful starting out, but once you get over the hump you really will feel like the mouse is obsolete.
So I have Ctrl-P installed and I used it sometimes, but often I just use NERDTree to navigate to a file. I think my brain does a better job of retrieving the location of the file than the name of the file or module/class. I find it mentally less taxing to use NERDTree, even if it takes a few more keystrokes.
What, I have to move my hand off the keyboard, over the numpad, land on the mouse, register where the pointer is, move the pointer to whereever, do the action... and reposition my hand back on the keyboard?
Seriously though, you do start to edit faster in vim once you 'get it', and I'm not all that great with it myself. I have seen a vim god in action and I've never seen anything so fast at editing. This all being said, vim is much more suitable for system administration than developing, IMO.
I am also a vim user, but agree that in some cases it can be faster to select text with the cursor. However, you lose some time moving your hand between the keyboard and mouse, so I usually don't do it.
However, you can have both. Neovim is a drop-in replacement for vim that lets you use the mouse to select text, scroll, change windows or panes, resize splits and so on. Resizing splits is one of those things that I prefer to do with a cursor.
I think vim can do some of the same things (all?), but it requires some configuration.
Because of some troubles with the integration with the clipboard, mouse support by default has been reverted for now in neovim. You can still enable it with
Yes, he hasn't yet really learned vim. That's why he didn't like it. You can't make vim do what you want it to do. You need to learn the vim way. Maybe he'll take another look in the future.
Reading further down I also saw that most of his complaints were about Emacs not about Vim. So all we can say is: he didn't bother enough with Vim yet.
As the author, this is the kind of condescension of Sublime users that annoys me. I think I know vim quite well, I've been using vim bindings for 5 years now across varying editors. I know almost all Vim bindings.
How about a test? Suppose my cursor is on line 198 of https://github.com/trishume/syntect/blob/ef3b99b06b72e89b7a0.... I want to copy "match_pat.has_captures && cur_level.captures.is_some()" on line 172. If you give me an efficient sequence of vim bindings for that movement I can tell you if I know what everything does without looking it up.
I think a more apt criticism would be that I think too slowly to use Vim. I can figure out that "26j4wy10e" does what I want, and at my normal english characters/second typing speed that is faster than doing the selection with my mouse. However, when I actually try and do that without figuring it out ahead of time I take longer to read, count and figure out the right numbers and actions, then type the individual characters (which due to muscle memory for english I'm slower at than typing english). I end up being slower than the mouse, and with a higher mental load.
You could say I just need to "git gud" and practice, but if practicing for hours a day for 5 years doesn't get me to the point that I'm better than the mouse, I think it's time to say that maybe it isn't a lack of practice, but perhaps an innate skill difference.
That all presumes that there exists a substantial number of people who are faster in practice at long distance text selection with vim shortcuts than I am with the mouse. I have yet to see someone where I can confidently say that is the case, and I've watched a reasonable number of vim users. I guess everyone I've seen using vim (including many 5+ year users) is a "vim n00b" in your model, that sounds a bit "no true scotsman"-like.
Honestly, if you spend your time learning Sublime instead of vim that's fine for me. I never used it, but I am not against putting Sublime on the same level as vim and emacs. My thinking is you need to learn one powerful editor to a high level if you want to be a programmer. No need to learn all.
But if you use your limited knowledge to judge vim, I have to point out that there is a vast ocean of editing power and you've only put your toes in until now.
The condescending one is really you in that instance, since from what you've written vim can't be in the same class as Spacemacs or Sublime. And this leads to many people ignoring vim, who might have gained a lot of insight into text editing by learning it. So yes, it needs pointing out that you know so little about it that you haven't been able to really assess its power yet. But if you learn it or not is none of my concern. If you want to really learn it, I can give you some good material, though.
E.g., if you want to really see something that vim is great at, maybe better at than any other editor, check this out: https://vimeo.com/15443936
PS: I hope you notice the phrasing here. There is something vim is probably the best at, doesn't mean that there aren't other things other editors aren't better at.
I think I agree with you way more than you think I do. I'm a huge fan of Vim-style-editing. I use it all the time. Every editor I've used since has been with some sort of Vim emulation.
I don't think, or at least I didn't intend, anything I wrote to imply that "vim can't be in the same class as Spacemacs or Sublime". It's definitely a very powerful text editor. My only complaints about it are plugin conflicts, discoverability and mouse hostility. Which are all things that can be worked around.
What I'm trying to do is argue against the thesis that you need to learn Vim/Emacs to get that level of power. Sublime can give you that power just as well and with some benefits.
I watched the entire video you linked, everything in there can be done in plain Sublime just as easily (without Vintageous even, and definitely with), with find+replace, multiple selections and macro saving for the last step of turning it into a script. I do acknowledge however that I learned one new vim thing, which is the g command for finding and then doing something, analogous in purpose to Sublime's "find and select all".
The only thing I think I disagree with you on is this: "But if you use your limited knowledge to judge vim, I have to point out that there is a vast ocean of editing power and you've only put your toes in until now." This seems to imply that there are facts about Vim that I don't know that if I knew them would make me faster at using Vim than I currently am at Sublime Text. I agree that if I had perfect Vim knowledge I would be just as fast as I am at Sublime Text, but not substantially faster.
In terms of a prediction, I believe that there is at most two editing tasks I've done in the past year that given more Vim knowledge I would have done over 1.5x faster than I did it in Sublime. It seems you disagree with me on this point, you can convince me by showing me a new Vim fact I didn't know (I do know quite a bit) and I can tell you if it would have helped.
Notably this does not specify that I magically increase my brain power to be able to instantly apply the Vim knowledge in the best possible way. I'm fully aware that if I could instantly determine the shortest Vim key sequence to accomplish a task and type it as fast as I do english, I would be way way faster in Vim. I contend that I personally could never do anything close to this regardless of how much I learned or practiced. In the same way that despite knowing a programming language and practicing programming a whole lot, I can't come up with the perfect program for a task instantly and type it as fast as I can type English.
Basically I think we agree that Vim is more powerful than Sublime without Vim emulation. We disagree on how much of a Vim n00b I am and how much better I could be by learning more. I'm uncertain of your stance on how much of Vim's power is not accessible through Sublime with Vim emulation. I contend that there is little additional editing power to be gained by stepping from Sublime with Vintageous to real Vim.
Comments
I find articles like this interesting, mainly because I went through a similar transition (IDE => Sublime => vim). However, my story stopped at vim.
For this particular article, I think what strikes me as odd is:
This is...precisely the opposite of my experience. I find navigation and selection to be the most powerful aspects of vim. I never felt like I "got" vim until I understood this, in fact. I constantly questioned if the investment of time was worth it. That being said, if you don't grok this I could see how it would be defeating. You eventually reach a point where you forget the mouse is even an option though.
My only other comment is in regard to his mention of issues with tabs. I'm curious what we were doing so differently, because that's never once been a problem for me, even in early days (however I could see how it would be super annoying).
I'm of the mind that it doesn't matter what you use as long as you're being productive, but it's also neat to see what path other people walk down.
I use vim from time to time, when hacking stuff on my server. I often hear people say it's the best editor.
Could you tell me; don't you miss a mouse? Or a scrollwheel? Or alt-tabbing? Do you use a project panel wher you can see your files? Do you browse that with your keyboard?
I ask because I always struggle in vim.
I use vim and don't miss the mouse; I don't even have a scroll wheel (I much prefer a proper old fashioned 3-button mouse with a proper middle button).
A tags file and ^] and ^t to navigate is faster than file browsing and scrolling around. * and # to quickly jump between instances of the same token. ^6 to quick swap between buffers, and ^o and ^i to quickly jump back and forth between locations I've visited.
Fast cursor movement using b, w, {, }, /search, [[, ]], is also much faster than mousing around or slowly navigating using arrow keys.
Scrolling is done by ^e and ^y, and zz to center on the cursor. Faster than a scroll wheel.
And don't forget the almighty '.'. To quickly replace a variable name, stand on the variable, hit * to search for it and remember the search. Then 'cw' to change a word, type the new name, hit escape. Then 'n.' to find the next instance and repeat the edit.
And this is why I read vim threads. I've been using vim for years, yet didn't know about ^O, ^I, ^E, ^Y or ^^.
That last in particular is going to be a big help. No more `:e #` for me!
While doling out vim tips, here are two quality of life improvements you can add to your .vimrc:
Ah, I'm one of those weirdos who actually uses ; (and ,). Though I guess I could
But that might take muscle memory too much time to adapt. (And would it break plugins?)I've already got F7 and F8 mapped, but I'll hunt out a spare key(sequence) for the mappings you suggest.
Could you tell me; don't you miss a mouse? Or a scrollwheel? Or alt-tabbing? Do you use a project panel wher you can see your files? Do you browse that with your keyboard?
I don't miss the mouse or scrollwheel at all when using vim. HJKL, as nice as it is, is probably the least efficient way to navigate code with vim. You're much better off navigating by word or by using / to just search for where you want to go. Having regex search just a single keypress away is amazingly powerful once you start really using it.
As far as alt-tabbing goes, I'm not sure what you mean. I alt-tab in and out of vim all the time. If you're having trouble with that, then perhaps something is wrong with your vim configuration.
I do not use a project panel to browse my files. That's IDE thinking. Vim is a text editor, not an IDE. Unix itself is the IDE. If you want to browse/navigate files, you should be using the shell, not vim. If you want you file browser and your text editor in the same window, you should be using screen, or tmux, rather than hacking additional panes onto vim.
I suspect your problem is that you're not using vim enough. Learning vim is much more like learning a musical instrument than it is like learning a programming language. You can't expect to master the piano if you only play one hour a month. Similarly you can't expect to master vim if you only use it to edit the odd config file on your server.
I don't miss mouse and scroll wheel because those are present in vim :)
To browse my files I use NERDtree, which acts like most project panels in IDEs, and yes I browse it using the keyboard.
Not sure what you mean by alt tabbing though.
I've been using Vim for a long time. I'm a sort of Vim heretic, I'd say. In that I'm mostly touch typing but I don't do the whole "fingers on the home row" or even GASP I don't navigate using hjkl. I've played too many games using the arrow keys or awsd to switch to some sort of weird in-line configuration of that.
Anyway:
1. Mouse - you can use your mouse with Vim.
set mouse=a
vmap <C-c> "+y
vmap <C-x> "+x
vmap <C-v> "+gP
There you go. Mouse actions + Ctrl-V Ctrl-C/X/V for easy copy-paste.
2. Scrollwheel - you can enable the scroll wheel, I can't test right now but I'm pretty sure you can use it. I move around more by Page Up/Page Down (another Vim heresy!) or by searching (a ton more common).
3. You can Alt-Tab using Vim. Just use Gvim. Or did you mean switching tabs with Ctrl-Tab? There you go:
map <C-Tab> <Esc>:tabnext<CR>
map <C-S-Tab> <Esc>:tabprevious<CR>
4. There's quite a few plugins for that. NerdTree, for example.
Anyway, don't feel forced to use Vim. I use it because it's cross platform, free and I'm used to it. But don't drink the KoolAid. It's not some magical weapon. Especially if your mental model doesn't match its model. For example in my case it matches only partially (see the whole arrow keys, copy-paste, mouse usage, etc.). But I still use it because I like the modal editing and to be honest, I think that for me command mode/ex mode is what keeps me using it. :s, :g, :tabnew & co. are too darn useful.
You've already gotten some good answers while I was finishing my coffee, but here goes anyway.
The only time I miss a mouse is when I want to fire up a game that actually runs on my Mac (Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, etc.). I'd say the main reason I don't miss a mouse in vim is because I don't use a mouse anywhere else on my Mac. On a fresh format I create 4 desktops, and I bind CMD+1-4 to switch between these. Whenever I want to launch chrome/term/mail/whatever I use CMD+space and launch it directly from Spotlight. I use Magnet (http://magnet.crowdcafe.com - no affiliation, just a fan) to maximize/minimize/layout windows without having to use the _remarkably awful_ Mac window management UI.
While within vim I don't miss a scroll-wheel because bouncing around with / and ? is just so, so, so much faster. I really cannot stress enough how slow it now feels to scroll up and down a file searching for a specific string when I'm forced to do so. It's maddening for me now.
Your question re: a project panel, etc, is probably the best one. I think I may be an outlier here. I don't use NERDtree, but a lot (most, in fact) of my friends who use vim do. There are really two use cases for opening a file - direct from the term or in concert with an already open file. I typically know the structure of a project so I can just cd around or vim right/to/the/file.js If I'm already editing something I'll usually just :vsp to/the/other/file.erb or if I'm really lost as to where I am or where I'm trying to go I'll just CTRL+Z back to the term, cd & ag around until I find myself, fg back to vim, then :vsp to/where/I/now/know/Im/going.scss
I suspect if I actually spent the time to learn NERDtree I may be able to get around unknown projects better, but I've always felt pretty good about my workflow so I've just never committed to it.
As the GP alludes to, the key insight to becoming productive in VIM is the power of the movement system. To (mis)quote Gary Bernhardt, the slowest thing you can do is read something to find where you want to be. Searching is better, and better still is being able to just go straight to the place you want to go, even if it's in another file.
If you're using a file tree, you are probably doing it wrong. Instead, get used to tools like Command-T and the :vim command. Also set incsesrch and hlsearch. Once you learn how these things work, start making a conscious effort to play a bit of vim golf to get to where you're looking to be in as few keystrokes as possible. It's a bit painful starting out, but once you get over the hump you really will feel like the mouse is obsolete.
So I have Ctrl-P installed and I used it sometimes, but often I just use NERDTree to navigate to a file. I think my brain does a better job of retrieving the location of the file than the name of the file or module/class. I find it mentally less taxing to use NERDTree, even if it takes a few more keystrokes.
What, I have to move my hand off the keyboard, over the numpad, land on the mouse, register where the pointer is, move the pointer to whereever, do the action... and reposition my hand back on the keyboard?
Seriously though, you do start to edit faster in vim once you 'get it', and I'm not all that great with it myself. I have seen a vim god in action and I've never seen anything so fast at editing. This all being said, vim is much more suitable for system administration than developing, IMO.
I am also a vim user, but agree that in some cases it can be faster to select text with the cursor. However, you lose some time moving your hand between the keyboard and mouse, so I usually don't do it.
However, you can have both. Neovim is a drop-in replacement for vim that lets you use the mouse to select text, scroll, change windows or panes, resize splits and so on. Resizing splits is one of those things that I prefer to do with a cursor.
I think vim can do some of the same things (all?), but it requires some configuration.
I don't think it requires anything beyond `set mouse=a` in your vimrc, and not even that if you're using gVim.
Because of some troubles with the integration with the clipboard, mouse support by default has been reverted for now in neovim. You can still enable it with
Yes, he hasn't yet really learned vim. That's why he didn't like it. You can't make vim do what you want it to do. You need to learn the vim way. Maybe he'll take another look in the future.
Reading further down I also saw that most of his complaints were about Emacs not about Vim. So all we can say is: he didn't bother enough with Vim yet.
As the author, this is the kind of condescension of Sublime users that annoys me. I think I know vim quite well, I've been using vim bindings for 5 years now across varying editors. I know almost all Vim bindings.
How about a test? Suppose my cursor is on line 198 of https://github.com/trishume/syntect/blob/ef3b99b06b72e89b7a0.... I want to copy "match_pat.has_captures && cur_level.captures.is_some()" on line 172. If you give me an efficient sequence of vim bindings for that movement I can tell you if I know what everything does without looking it up.
I think a more apt criticism would be that I think too slowly to use Vim. I can figure out that "26j4wy10e" does what I want, and at my normal english characters/second typing speed that is faster than doing the selection with my mouse. However, when I actually try and do that without figuring it out ahead of time I take longer to read, count and figure out the right numbers and actions, then type the individual characters (which due to muscle memory for english I'm slower at than typing english). I end up being slower than the mouse, and with a higher mental load.
You could say I just need to "git gud" and practice, but if practicing for hours a day for 5 years doesn't get me to the point that I'm better than the mouse, I think it's time to say that maybe it isn't a lack of practice, but perhaps an innate skill difference.
That all presumes that there exists a substantial number of people who are faster in practice at long distance text selection with vim shortcuts than I am with the mouse. I have yet to see someone where I can confidently say that is the case, and I've watched a reasonable number of vim users. I guess everyone I've seen using vim (including many 5+ year users) is a "vim n00b" in your model, that sounds a bit "no true scotsman"-like.
Honestly, if you spend your time learning Sublime instead of vim that's fine for me. I never used it, but I am not against putting Sublime on the same level as vim and emacs. My thinking is you need to learn one powerful editor to a high level if you want to be a programmer. No need to learn all.
But if you use your limited knowledge to judge vim, I have to point out that there is a vast ocean of editing power and you've only put your toes in until now.
The condescending one is really you in that instance, since from what you've written vim can't be in the same class as Spacemacs or Sublime. And this leads to many people ignoring vim, who might have gained a lot of insight into text editing by learning it. So yes, it needs pointing out that you know so little about it that you haven't been able to really assess its power yet. But if you learn it or not is none of my concern. If you want to really learn it, I can give you some good material, though.
E.g., if you want to really see something that vim is great at, maybe better at than any other editor, check this out: https://vimeo.com/15443936
PS: I hope you notice the phrasing here. There is something vim is probably the best at, doesn't mean that there aren't other things other editors aren't better at.
I think I agree with you way more than you think I do. I'm a huge fan of Vim-style-editing. I use it all the time. Every editor I've used since has been with some sort of Vim emulation.
I don't think, or at least I didn't intend, anything I wrote to imply that "vim can't be in the same class as Spacemacs or Sublime". It's definitely a very powerful text editor. My only complaints about it are plugin conflicts, discoverability and mouse hostility. Which are all things that can be worked around.
What I'm trying to do is argue against the thesis that you need to learn Vim/Emacs to get that level of power. Sublime can give you that power just as well and with some benefits.
I watched the entire video you linked, everything in there can be done in plain Sublime just as easily (without Vintageous even, and definitely with), with find+replace, multiple selections and macro saving for the last step of turning it into a script. I do acknowledge however that I learned one new vim thing, which is the g command for finding and then doing something, analogous in purpose to Sublime's "find and select all".
The only thing I think I disagree with you on is this: "But if you use your limited knowledge to judge vim, I have to point out that there is a vast ocean of editing power and you've only put your toes in until now." This seems to imply that there are facts about Vim that I don't know that if I knew them would make me faster at using Vim than I currently am at Sublime Text. I agree that if I had perfect Vim knowledge I would be just as fast as I am at Sublime Text, but not substantially faster.
In terms of a prediction, I believe that there is at most two editing tasks I've done in the past year that given more Vim knowledge I would have done over 1.5x faster than I did it in Sublime. It seems you disagree with me on this point, you can convince me by showing me a new Vim fact I didn't know (I do know quite a bit) and I can tell you if it would have helped.
Notably this does not specify that I magically increase my brain power to be able to instantly apply the Vim knowledge in the best possible way. I'm fully aware that if I could instantly determine the shortest Vim key sequence to accomplish a task and type it as fast as I do english, I would be way way faster in Vim. I contend that I personally could never do anything close to this regardless of how much I learned or practiced. In the same way that despite knowing a programming language and practicing programming a whole lot, I can't come up with the perfect program for a task instantly and type it as fast as I can type English.
Basically I think we agree that Vim is more powerful than Sublime without Vim emulation. We disagree on how much of a Vim n00b I am and how much better I could be by learning more. I'm uncertain of your stance on how much of Vim's power is not accessible through Sublime with Vim emulation. I contend that there is little additional editing power to be gained by stepping from Sublime with Vintageous to real Vim.