Vim is fantastic for reading text. There are so many good commands that make it trivial to move around your code incredibly easily, and also make it easier to r

Vim is fantastic for reading text. There are so many good commands that make it trivial to move around your code incredibly easily, and also make it easier to read (for example, a 2 key chord to position the line under your current cursor to the top/middle/bottom of your viewport). Even better, unlike most IDEs, the overwhelming majority of your screen is devoted to just the text. There are no toolbars, no sidebars, not even a menu bar. Vim (and similar terminal based editors) are the original focus mode text viewers/editors. Finally, the VIM chords become natural in a way keyboard shortcuts don’t. Part of the reason is that with the VIM normal mode, you have access to significantly more keys with which to form shortcuts, whereas most other editors use number and letter keys for typing text, so shortcuts become increasingly convoluted combinations of modifier keys. Everything about VIM is optimized for reading text, then editing text and only after that inserting text. Inserting text is a special mode in VIM, whereas the default normal mode is for reading. So VIM is a highly optimized tool for the workflow you described.