I actually do find that text manipulation can become the bottleneck in the right environment, at some points in a coding session. Vim won't make you faster while staring at a pair of empty braces thinking about the right algorithm. Vim can make you faster while rewriting a function, moving code around, or typing code that you've already thought through. And I often find that the faster I can get a thought out and stop holding as much state in my head, the faster the next idea comes.