I would think that it's because ViM wants you to learn something about how the it works. If it just exited with Ctrl-C, you'd never get to know about the : mag

I would think that it's because ViM wants you to learn something about how the it works. If it just exited with Ctrl-C, you'd never get to know about the : magic. Not to mention Ctrl-C is ambiguous. What to do: Exit and save? Exit without saving? What if it's a new file? And probably others I'm not thinking about right now.