It may seem that way because it's a complete paradigm shift of how you interact with an editor. Once you understand that, then it becomes a very valuable tool that will make you more efficient. It is a big time investment but the payoff is worth it.
I still need to use IDEs for software development at work but I have to have some sort of Vim emulation on top of them.
It helped me break the habit of needing to use arrow keys / mouse for navigating around text. Why is this important? The 1-2 seconds to reach over from home row add up. For example, instead of scrolling the mouse several turns to get to the top of a file, I can just type
gg. All without needing to strain my wrist to reach over for the less efficient methods.Once you master navigation with just keyboard (sans arrow keys) you really feel like a speed demon and the alternative begins to feel clunky. It may not seem like it at first because you have to retrain the way you interact with text files that goes against the habits you're used too.
Apart from that, for any sort of Linux server management, vim or vi are usually installed so it's a good skill to have if you quickly need to tweak a config for example. Nano works but is less efficient from an editing perspective.
I work in the terminal a lot and also use
tmuxwith vim keybindings. I love being able to navigate entirely mouse free.I use Vim emulation wherever possible. I enjoy using a web browser with vim keybindings to navigate around and reduce mouse usage. Vim is a paradigm that many tools incorporate or have plugins to do so because it is just that useful once you learn it.
Vim is not meant to be an IDE. Things like intellisense don't work (as) well from my experience. But I just use vim plugins in my IDEs so I can get best of both.