People will get into the whole verb-noun editing language, which is great, but the biggest and first real world improvement is much simpler:
You don't use your mouse to move the cursor around a document.
After a while you just look at the document and your fingers move and the cursor moves, you can get anywhere in the file in just a few jumps. It's not the same as using a mouse or a touchpad where you need visual feedback to place the cursor in a specific place and the movement is continuous. It feels like it takes less mental processing to do that and it is less distracting while you are concentrating on actual work.
It's hard to explain, and I'm one of those people who using vim, vimperator and vim keybindings in his shell. The only other times I've reached the same levels of muscle memory taking over complex behaviour (besides sports) is when playing video games or driving a car. You concentrate on what you want done and some lower level part of your brain and your hands just takes care of it.
A pointer based system just can't compete in terms of immersion.
I have a feeling I just typed a lot and didn't do any better of a job explaining it.
Explaining nifty Vim backflips is the wrong way to sell Vim. A 15 minute session of `vimtutor` was enough to enlighten me. If I had needed a proficiency in Vim to appreciate Vim, I would've never started.
You don't use your mouse to move the cursor around a document.
After a while you just look at the document and your fingers move and the cursor moves, you can get anywhere in the file in just a few jumps. It's not the same as using a mouse or a touchpad where you need visual feedback to place the cursor in a specific place and the movement is continuous. It feels like it takes less mental processing to do that and it is less distracting while you are concentrating on actual work.
It's hard to explain, and I'm one of those people who using vim, vimperator and vim keybindings in his shell. The only other times I've reached the same levels of muscle memory taking over complex behaviour (besides sports) is when playing video games or driving a car. You concentrate on what you want done and some lower level part of your brain and your hands just takes care of it.
A pointer based system just can't compete in terms of immersion.
I have a feeling I just typed a lot and didn't do any better of a job explaining it.