Please justify your use of vim.

As opposed to?

A fine writeup of "Why vi[m]": http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.html

Search (and Replace) with regular expressions with one keystroke
Proximity to command line (git, drush, rsync)
Split screen window (vim -O) with easy copy/paste between the two
Line number jump
Extensive documentation, online and with :h
Good code folding

Not having to move hands away from keys for everything that isn't typing!

No fear of having to edit files on a server. And vim is installed on every computer I've had to use, as opposed to being out of my usual environment if someone didn't have my GUI text editor of choice.

For me it comes down to sheer laziness. Using vim as my primary editor means not having to learn something new when I ssh into a server. :)

I really like being able to ssh into different servers and have my look and feel the same across different environments. Really you can't beat the light-weightedness (if that's a word) of it. I've used other IDE's (eclipse, Komodo, netbeans...) and though those are good, they tend to slow down for me over time.

It's infinitely extensible and it works on every machine. If you want the full-on IDE experience, it's just a matter of adding the plugins -- and it even has a manager for that (Pathogen) -- and using a terminal multiplexer. Also super-light on resources as others have said. It doesn't force you to make packages or throw out impertinent errors or warnings. All the ticks are well known, so it's as simple as googling and looking at stackoverflow to figure out why something isn't working. Generally, if all your files are in the right place and your terminal variables are right, you're going to be fine. And if you have to fix those things to get working, oh look, you're already in the terminal! Or, even if you're using gvim or macvim (for prettier colors I guess) you still just go

:!some_unix_command

to figure out what's up. Being able to just go

:!php -l %

to check for parse errors is a blessing. Also, editing a file as yourself only to find that you need to be root:

:w !sudo tee %

Proximity to the command line also makes it easy to just look through your code in a sensible way by using find and grep or the superior tool ack.

I also use Pentadactyl, so I just dig using the keyboard for everything and having more space for the info I care about rather than a bunch of unwieldy toolbars.

Forget :!php -l % - use the checkstyle_vim plugin to have it automatically lint all your PHP buffers on save and let you jump to where the error is. (Incoming patch later.)

I love vim because I'm always one ssh connection away from my full editing environment. Since I've got a phone with a nice keyboard, that means pretty much everywhere.

The key question is, why not?
Having ready configuration for any number of editors is only awesome.
(I flirted with Vim, but allowed myself to be smitten by TextMate out of sheer laziness. And Komodo still won't talk to me.)

So, do we want to consolidate this into a paragraph we can stick on the home page? It looks like the key points are:

• Vim is everywhere
• Efficiency / keeping your hands on the keyboard
• Speed

Or, we could link to one of the above pages that makes the case for us.

Because of these: http://www.lullabot.com/videos/command-line-basics-intro-vivim
I'm still learning vim, and for big edits I'll sometimes use nano, though.

I use nano the past few years, mainly because it is easy (really easy) but I've been using Vim the last few weeks in order to get acquainted with it and make the switch (from nano).

The main reason: it is everywhere! I've logged in shells that don't have nano. Furthermore Vim is more powerfull, it just needs to get used to it, as with all things!

I'm a recent convert from TextMate to vim, mainly due to the fact that I use lots of different machines for work. It's wonderful not to have to worry about whether or not TextMate or Eclipse will exist on the system. Additionally, no software licenses is always a plus :-)

The question raised in this issue is downright offensive. Closing.

I think it's a good question. If someone is going to take the (considerable) time to learn some arcane program when there are modern alternatives like Coda and Espresso 2 it's only natural to ask if it's worth it.

So far beyond being free and cross platform it seems about as useful as knowing pig latin (only more confusing) but that's just me.

Use whatever makes you happy. For many people it's worth it. Nobody's forcing you to follow the same path, though.