The problem of these kind of articles is that it shows to people who are unfamiliar with vim how hard is it to use it, and how many plugins you need to make it usable. But I think that most people who use vim everyday just started with the most basic vim during several months and then they added one plugin, then two, then three. But plugins are not mandatory in vim, and you don't need to remember all the shorcuts eit…
But vim is really not that hard to use. The initial learning curve might be steep, but as a whole vim is in general easy to use once you 'grok' it.
Anyways I do agree with you on one thing, this articles convey the idea that vim requires plugins and magic to be usable, which in my opinion is a disservice. People get on the bandwagon and install 50 plugins and then complain that vim is unusable when sshing into a server because it doesn't have the plugins they use.