I think you have misinterpreted something. There have been a lot of Vim patches recently that are dramatically improving the long-existing Python scripting support in preparation for the upcoming Vim 7.4 release. But Bram has not said anything about "phasing out" VimScript. The two languages will continue to coexist (along with the handful of others that are also supported). There is far too much investment in VimScript, however flawed it may be, to actually deprecate or remove it.

It is very likely that during the hype I had misinterpreted the 7.4 plans. I was under the impression that the work on Python was trying to make it the dominant means of extending vim while keeping vimscript for legacy reasons. I mean this is still technically feasible, but would require the support of the whole vim community. I would go on about how it's weird that many vim users aren't familar vimscript, but I'd feel like I'm preaching to the choir. Thanks for clearing things up.

I'm reaching a point where I can consider myself at home with VimScript (moreso the bigger investment has been on the built-in vim functions and not on the language proper), and I'm becoming increasingly active within the Vim community. I can tell I don't have any plugins in Python/Ruby and actively avoid them, seeking lightweight alternatives instead, and I would detach myself from the community if VimScript were to be phased out in favor of Python (don't have too much love for it.) Fortunately none of that is going to happen.

I do often opt for the slower, pure vimscript extensions in order to avoid having to remember to compile specific ones. Hypothetically, if vim had an embedded form of Lua, it could satisfy the people who want a familiar scripting language and it wouldn't be dependent on whatever version of the language the system has installed. I think that would be a excellent choice if you were writing a brand new editor.

To be perfectly honest, I think so many vim users (including myself) don't know vimscript [in depth] because they can easily find everything they need already.

While Python scripting in Vim is very cool, my understanding was that Vim's scripting API was rather limited in comparison to Emacs. Vim only exposes a few hooks with the majority of the editor features implemented in its C core, while Emacs implements pretty much everything in Elisp, thus exposing pretty much everything to extensions.

But please correct me if I'm wrong -- this is just my impression from reading HN etc.

Really? That would be cool. Can you point me to a thread or something where I can read about these developments?

For vim scripting with Python: http://www.tummy.com/presentations/vimpython-20070225/

As a vim user it doesn't make sense that you didn't already know vim was scriptable with multiple other languages (e.g. perl, ruby, tcl, python ...) already for a long time.

As a vim user, emacs lisp is bad. A proper lisp would be more worthwhile.