It is a fact. The grand parent is talking about slowly navigating around one character at a time. Vim has much more efficient ways to move the cursor to where you want to go.

for me it is a fact.

I still use the mouse from time to time when editing text mind you. But for most actions, I would not think of moving my hand to the mouse, because it is slow.

Even before vim, I made gratuitous use of end of line navigation via keyboard (home/end buttons; cmd+arrow keys). vim is just a more powerful version of those buttons.

I make no claim that vim is the MOST efficient platform ever created, but it's a lot faster than mouse+keyboard and/or out of the box editing methods.

For me it is not a fact, and I find vim objectively much more harder to use than “regular” editors. But it matches my thinking in a way that I don’t have to plan ahead how many times to press an arrow, or to wait until a key repeat rate gets the cursor where I want it to be. Acquired vim reflexes erase the complexity and leave this benefit.

I always found this “faster” claim somewhat stretched and zealous. I don’t need to type fast. I need the editing routine to gtfo of my mind when I’m programming.