Why do people use the vi editor

[tarlejh]

Why would someone use vi exclusively? 

 

Do real developers really only use vi? 

 

I understand the advantage that you don't move your hands away from the keyboard in vi-- but you still have to compensate with extra keystrokes just to move the cursor.  So it seems like people still use it only because it allows you to edit right on the server and comes with any Unix or Linux OS.

 

Even having mastered the learning curve, to say it is faster than a modern text editor is ridiculous: 

 

Suppose you want to indent a 20 line block of code.  In a GUI editor, selecting it with the mouse and hitting tab cannot take more than half a second.  It would take a vi user at least a few seconds to do the same task.

 

I use vi often to edit on the server when I don't want to FTP over and over.  But I still cannot see using it as your main IDE.