So I've been thinking about this and your other responses in this thread, and I think I've figured out where our viewpoints differ, fundamentally. I think many people, yourself included, want to do more with an editor. That's your motivation for using vim, and so you pursue customization, advanced features, and relentlessly minimize keystrokes. (That's a plural you, by the way. I'm speaking to everyone advocating a bells-and-whistles approach to learning vim.) I want to emphasize that there's nothing wrong with this -- it's a perfectly valid frame of mind, but it's just not my frame of mind. In contrast, I want to think less about my editor. That is, I want editing text to be as automatic as touch-typing. I want for there to be as little friction between my mind and the screen as possible, so I don't want to learn new things about my editor any faster than I can incorporate them into the set of things I can do without thinking about them. As a result, I'm sure there are people who've been using vim for two weeks who know more features than I do after 20 years.

Anyhow, I'd be really interested to know if you agree with this characterization of your outlook.