Let me start with, I fell completely in love with vi! After using it more then a week I can tell, it loads incredibly fast, you only need to know the most basic of commands to make the mouse completely obsolete and if you can type with 10 fingers blind, you’ll work like lightening. If  you are not recovering from a broken wrist that is

Something I can’t relate to though, is the so called steep learning curve.  I don’t see what there is so  steep about it Within a day I got used to the 2 modes and I learned the basic commands by heart. Plus, I’m adding new commands to my repertoire each day.  I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that  I am learning to program while learning vi, or that I am just highly intelligent

The main reason why I started learning vi; is that when learning Linux it’s highly recommended to learn it. You see vi, is always available on every *nix system, and it can be  your life boat when the GUI or the X configuration breaks.

Being the aspiring l337 h4x0r I am I of course only use vim-minimal. These days *nix systems come shipped with vim-minimal which is the same as vi.

Yes the minimal indicates that you can add extra modules, to make life easier. Vim is based on vi, everything that’s possible in vi is possible in Vim, but it doesn’t work the other way round! Keep that in mind when installing those extra modules. The more Vim-modules you’ll install the farther you’ll get from vi!