There are definitely some pathological situations where vim becomes unresponsive even on a beefy box. Usually there's exceptionally long lines of text involved

There are definitely some pathological situations where vim becomes unresponsive even on a beefy box. Usually there's exceptionally long lines of text involved, esp. with syntax highlighting/:setf active IME. Furthermore there's the whole intentional delay on ESC exit from modes like an aborted search query... that can make it feel unresponsive but it's just a timeout. Try it, hit '/' in vim, then ESC to abort the search, count a full second of unresponsiveness. This blog speaks to such ESC delays one encounters in vim: https://www.johnhawthorn.com/2012/09/vi-escape-delays/ https://www.johnhawthorn.com/2012/09/vi-escape-delays/