Vim is a language, and languages outlast their editors

This bout is closed — you cannot vote it any more — but it is very much still worth arguing, because the point outlives the poll.

Vim is not a set of shortcuts, it is a grammar: verbs (change, delete, yank), nouns (word, sentence, paragraph), and motions that compose into sentences you stop having to think about. ci" is a thought, not a keystroke. That grammar has now been ported into every serious editor and IDE on the planet, which is the real tell — people rebuild Vim's language on top of other tools because the language is the durable part. Emacs is a magnificent operating system in search of a text editor; Vim is a text editor whose ideas escaped the editor entirely.

You do not keep re-implementing something for thirty years unless it was right.