alt Hacker News> I have way more stuff to keep in my head than I have room for and I can't afford to expend more than about 0.0001% of context on a text editor.
I can't say I agree. To me this is equivalent to saying "I have way more music in my head than I have room for and I can't afford to expend more than about 0.0001% of context on a piano". The tool you use for 8+ hours a day is extremely important and even small gains will pay dividends over the long run. The more efficiently the text editor allows you to do tasks, the more time you have to think about other tasks.
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To continue the musical instrument analogy, I already master the piano and I am happy with it solving my requirements. Learning the guitar will be a great undertaking, and provide me no new songs to play.
Hence, I will stick to my piano.
All pianos have the same interface, no?
He IS saying that. Vi is more efficient for him every hour every day because he has been able to learn it to the point where there is nearly zero effort in using it. To learn something else would be to throw away all that hardcoded memory and try to rebuild it.