Truth. This has been my experience as well but saying this would upset a lot of people.
People would equate the time it takes to press 4 keys vs moving the mouse but entirely forget the mental compute time of finding a pattern, recognition, selection of first 2 chars, etc. That for me takes more time than moving the mouse.
That's just because you haven't internalizes the keypresses so they're second nature. With enough practice most of these operations are practically instant, done before you've had time to move your hand over to the mouse.
Of course the keyword here is "practice". And just using Vim without putting effort into learning these movements doesn't make you good at them, so people using Vim for years/decades without making them second nature and thus prefering the mouse is not too surprising.
I've been using vim daily for many years and I still find mouse faster. Computing doesn't get faster beyond a certain limit. You still need to find and search text where you want to land. That takes 200ms more than I'd like. Pattern finding doesn't get faster beyond a certain point. You can't solve a jigsaw puzzle instantly after 10 years of experience. Pattern recognition and search requires finite time.
Do pianists think about where the keyboard is? the notes? they really just know from repetition. The same happens with text editors if you commit yourself to them like emacs or vim
Yes that happens, but I am not arguing about whether we get faster from repetition. I am saying that after a sustained practice and repetition, there exists a hard limit. Pianists cannot play at 100000 keys/minute.
I spend solid 6 hours a day on vim. Almost every day. I don't look at the keyboard or what I am typing. I don't even think about what I am typing.
However, searching for 2 letters is a constant time operation and cannot be optimized away with repetition. You still need to go search for a word that starts with "ha" if you're trying to moving to a word "hackernews". THAT takes time and mental compute. This is very different from not looking at keyboard keys or your argument about a pianist.
Whatever that search time is exceeds the ease of using a mouse (for me). Trust me, it is not about practice.
People would equate the time it takes to press 4 keys vs moving the mouse but entirely forget the mental compute time of finding a pattern, recognition, selection of first 2 chars, etc. That for me takes more time than moving the mouse.