I’d like actual examples instead of “I work faster”, something like “I can move straight to the middle of the file with 7mv” or “I can keep 4 different text snippets in memory and paste each with a number+pt, like 2pt”, things that you actually use somewhat frequently instead of what you can do, but probably only did once.
This would be a big advantage… except multiple cursors were invented so I can easily do that without having to memorize a whole new editing language.
Multiple cursors are fantastic for certain use cases, but will not help you when each line needs a different input – if you’re swapping arguments in function calls, if you’re replacing one bracket type with another around contents of arbitrary length, etc.
Mind you, if your objective here is to not learn a new thing, then you can just go ahead and do that, you don’t need an excuse.
Yeah, I usually do that with regexp replacement in other editors, but sometimes it’s too hard to express as a regular expression
That’s just one thing the editing language does, though. There’s no single feature you can point to as the smoking gun; it’s all the small advantages added together that make vi worthwhile.