If you just want to learn the basics, you'll be faster with a "modern" editor with mouse and some basic keyboard shortcuts. But if you really master Vim, I woul

If you just want to learn the basics, you'll be faster with a "modern" editor with mouse and some basic keyboard shortcuts. But if you really master Vim, I would say it's faster and more powerful than any modern editor (and you can use it as an extension in VSCode). For me it's mostly navigating ( 213gg - takes you to line 213, $ - end of line, t) - next closing parenthesis,% jumps to opening closing parenthesis or similar when you're on it, and so on). Macro recording: qe - records macro in "e" ... do vim stuff ... q ... 10@e - execute your macro 10 times. Text substitution with regular expressions (:%s/th(i|u)s/that/g). I think it's not about "hjkl" navigation, that is a probably the tiniest improvement in speed (not lifting your fingers from the home row). But if you master the navigation part and learn how to solve more complex editing tasks with macros and regular expressions, then you'll be a lot faster than in a regular editor.