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.