Also, not having to move away from the home row makes me feel much faster. Having to use Alt/Control/Arrows makes me cry. (I know you can't avoid Control in Vim, but in this example it is not required.)

ci"baz<esc> is 7 keystrokes, only one of which is a jump.

<ctl-F>bar<esc>baz is 8 strokes and two jumps. It also requires typing the entire string in quotes. If the example were

var foo = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";

The vim example would not change but yours would.

I'm not trying to be an a-hole, use what you like, I'm just saying, that for me the attraction to vim is the strive toward the minimization of keystrokes, especially ones that require me to move my hands.

However, if I was actually faced with this problem, I'd use End, Ctrl + Left, Ctrl + D, baz, which is a total of 7 keystrokes. (if you don't release Ctrl)

The vim example was 8 keystrokes. (" is shift + ') I have no doubt that you could manufacture an example that shows a benefit for vim, but I think that the advantages are overestimated by heavy vim users.

Edit: Your longer string example is a good example of a task that's more efficient in vim.

In his example, what is more important is that you are 'describing' what you want to do with text with commands.

So when you have

var foo1 = "bar";

var foo2 = "hello hi";

var foo3 = "when and why";

You can use the same command [cib"] to change the value assigned to foo1/foo2/foo3. You are describing your change semantically i.e. I want to change word inside the double quotes.

In Sublime and other editors, it matters what the assignment is and you have to use different approach in each scenario.

Frankly, as I type at 70wpm, I don't care about saving a few keystroke here and there.

Gives back a list of interesting people.

Not that I think it matters if you use Vim or anything particular for that matter.

Also, let's not confuse techniques with tools. It is unfortunate that, other than modal editing which is too generic, we don't have a name for Vi-style editing which does not involve Vi, so people confuse Vi-style editing (e.g. the technique), with Vi (e.g. the tool). The tool may have its own shortcomings which render it unsuitable.

i think it's easier to grab the mouse, dlb click bar, foo

with vim, it's still easier than grabbing the mouse. that's the litmus test of text editor interface effectiveness. the mouse is awesome, hard to beat. so if your editor beats it, game on!

<cmd>-<right>, <option-left>, <option-shift-right>, baz

And considering you didn't have to press <mode>: beforehand, it can be just as fast.

I'm a vim user, but using it for something like Objective-C in place of the wonderful autocomplete in Xcode would be a totally dumb thing to do. It's simply not smart enough to improve my productivity, even with the slight speed increases with text-manipulation.

edit: link - https://github.com/JugglerShu/XVim

The same holds true for Sublime Text. Instead of using the arrow keys, you could do any of the following:

  Ctrl+H : Replace
  bar : Find what
  baz : Replace with
  Ctrl+Shift+H : Replace first match
  <esc> : Exit replace mode

  Ctrl + I : Incremental Find (finds and selects finding)
  bar : Find & select text
  baz : Overwrite selection

  Ctrl+<Right>+<Right>+<Right>+<Right> : Reach the word bar
  Ctrl+d : Select word under cursor
  baz : Overwrite selection

  Ctrl+P : GoTo Anything
  # : Goto word
  bar : Goto word 'bar' & select it
  baz : Overwrite selection

    f"ci"baz