I guess all of those actual vim users had a reason to encourage you to take the "extreme route" instead of the incremental one. Maybe they have never seen anyon

I guess all of those actual vim users had a reason to encourage you to take the "extreme route" instead of the incremental one. Maybe they have never seen anyone actually succeed in getting fluent in vim by incremental learning? I know I have yet to witness such. But I'm glad to learn from your link that it's possible. I'll show it to aspiring vim users as an alternative take to learning vim.