It's not a skill most vim users care whether you develop, either. I don't mean that in the aggressive way it may sound.

Vim users like vim for some legitimate reasons (e.g. ubiquity) and some illegitimate reasons (e.g. speed). But to my eyes, it's typically the users of heavy IDEs who seem to be insecure in their choice, to the point that they get offended by the fact that vim works for others. Take marssaxman as a case in point.

I'd find it easier to agree with you if it didn't feel like the only aggressor in the editor wars is Vim. But ultimately, "vim is amazing" blog posts are about as interesting as monad tutorials. They're just verbal droppings excreted by young minds that are easily blown. Nothing to get worked up about, but sometimes fun to pick through.

We disagree on which party is the aggressor, but agree on the rest. As a vim user, I don't think vim is amazing. As a NetBeans user, past Eclipse user, and past Visual Studio user, and sometimes Sublime Text user, I don't think they're amazing either. Though Sublime Text 2 is quite well done.

As a clojure hobbyist, Light Table might one day be amazing. But it's not yet.

I don't think it's a matter of insecurity. In the decades since vim was released, we've made drastic improvements in UX design that have made computing much more accessible and intuitive. (And we're still moving forward at a rapid rate — just look at the stuff that people like Bret Victor and Chris Granger doing!) And yet, so many programmers are adamant on sticking to 20th century editors and obscure key commands, even sometimes (sometimes!) at the expense of usability. I don't think it's particularly offensive to wonder why such old tools are still so popular, especially when for most people the thinking part of programming is what takes the most time.

Additionally, your tools shouldn't define you as a programmer, and yet I often see people getting shamed for using an IDE instead of vim/emacs/whatever.

But there's this misconception that we who use vim are simply ignorant of these amazing IDEs that have changed the way everyone program and which will make your coffee in the morning.

I've used IDEs, a lot. And not decades ago, I try new IDEs out all the time. When I write Jenkins plugins it's in NetBeans. I have tried out SublimeText 2 quite a bit. I used to write games so I spent all my time in Visual Studio with Visual Assist X.

Given all that, when I want to write some C++ I fire up vim. Not because I'm unaware of all the IDEs out there and all they can do. But because I'm very efficient using vim, find, grep, sed/awk, etc.

It's not offensive to wonder why such old tools are still so popular, but it's offensive to assume that they're popular because their users are ignorant. Maybe you just haven't gotten it yet (and won't). Or maybe we just have different use-cases. The vim commands obviously aren't obscure to me since I know them.

I agree that your tools shouldn't define you as a programmer. Clearly I wouldn't shame anyone for using an IDE, since I do all the time when it makes sense to. The problem is that many IDE users just can't accept that I use vim because I work well in it, not because I think it's trendy. I can work well in any environment you throw me into, because 90% chance it has vi, and otherwise it has Notepad. Most VisualStudio users can't say the same. Fine, they don't think that's an important skill, I can accept that, just don't tell me it's not important to me.