Do you think that Vim is a reflection of extreme functional UX design?

In the beginning there was the command line. A keyboard input to a type on paper output. Then UNIX. The first editor was 'ed' (edit). It was line based, designed for a keyboard onto paper output. It was enhanced to become 'ex'.

When the happy hackers at UC Berkeley were porting UNIX onto VAXen (becoming BSD Unix), CRT terminals were available, notably the DEC VT-100 and other less expensive ones. These terminals had commands that would move the terminal cursor around the screen, allowing a editing program to modify the 24 (or 25) lines of 80 characters on the display. But the terminal commands were DIFFERENT. So the configuration file TERMCAP and the C library libcurses were created.

Then 'ed' / 'ex' was expanded to become 'vi' (visual, not six). Note that the 'ed'/'ex' commands are still there, invoked by the ':' command. Now there was a full screen text editor that worked on different CRT terminals.

This was all before UX design existed. It evolved. 'vi' was a giant leap up from a typewriter editor.

(We don't need no stinkin' mices)

I don't think anybody knew those big words when vi was cooked up.