Bringing up the old mouse makes this conversation sound so dated - as I said, I use a trackpad. Specifically, like millions of others, I work on a MacBook Pro with an incredibly precise trackpad right under the keyboard. I move my hand to and from that trackpad in about 0.1s, and I can click on anything I want in less than half a second. "Rich intentions in a few keystrokes" doesn't sound competitive with that IMO.
It's all about uninterrupted experience, I don't want to move my hand anywhere off the home row and then move back again, it feels clunky.
Regarding competitiveness, with a bit of get used to, you can muscle memory things like: "remove content inside this bracket (), or "", or block {} and place me into insert mode so I can start typing new content" in 3 keystrokes. I don't see how searching manually for start and end then select with mouse/trackpad can ever be competitive to that.
I'd happily race using vim against anyone using any pointer device. Your very fast 0.1s accumulates over the day, the week, the year. Versus never moving your hand away from the keyboard.
How do you handle having to change a function's parameters, for instance?
In vim, you just have your cursor inside the (...) and do `ci)`, which is (c)hange (i)nside `(, which instantly deletes all the test inside the (...) and you can type that stuff out easily
For a trackpad, don't you have to manually select all that text, hit delete, then start typing again? Or is there a better way I'm not thinking of
So. Many. Shortcuts. And, if you use it as an extension to your IDE, say for VSCode, you can still use your pointer.
Delete to line's end: d$
Delete to next blank line: d]
Replace current character: r
Surround the next 3 words with quotes: ys3w" (non standard, but out-of-the-box on VSCode)
