I'm not going to bother asking why Vim/Vi is interesting to you, but in answer to your question: No. I immediately went for the Viper-mode Vi emulation and it'

I'm not going to bother asking why Vim/Vi is interesting to you, but in answer to your question: No. I immediately went for the Viper-mode Vi emulation and it's not good. Go whole-hog. Just dive into the deep end and start swimming. The reason for that is that the emulation layer lives in a limbo that is half-emacs-half-vi. The modes don't work the same way. And I'd be wary of falling back on Emacs instead of learning the Vi way. If you really want to try to transition to a new editor, I would open up a fresh install of Vim and start with the in-editor tutorial.