Interesting stuff, but I'd really like to know the before-and-after numbers. You've talked about a lot of optimisations, and metrics, but how much did the optimisations actually optimise your workflow according to the metrics?
Lots of good advice, nonetheless - and an actual reason to look at using Vim!
If there's any interest I'll happily do a more in-depth follow-up post with my specific numbers and scripts. My metrics (bugs fixed, commits made, functions changed) all jumped by roughly a factor of 10. Yes, really.
There's definitely interest -- on my part anyway. I'd be especially interested to see the scripts you used. I'd love to be doing this sort of thing, and more specifically what others have done would be helpful.
I went to VIM because of the powerful things you could do. Search and replace is usually tedious on IDEs, involving windows that popup and disappear, and retyping things a lot. Experimentation on changing is usually quite time-consuming.
With VIM, you try it, and if it doesn't work, a single keystroke gets you back where you were and a couple more retrieves the last thing you tried, which you can edit.
Similarly, moving or changing chunks of text is much easier on VIM than any IDE I've ever found.
And finally, you can have all that power on any system. I've yet to find a server that didn't at least have VI, and usually VIM.
Lots of good advice, nonetheless - and an actual reason to look at using Vim!