I don't see why you need to learn vim. Just open your files with your preferred editor from the command line, as in Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails tutorial. It's a google away to set up 'subl' to open a file in sublime text 2, for example.

I think the larger idea of knowing the surrounding tools and resources is crucial and can be glossed over (for example, not once has a professor at my university mentioned StackOverflow). Great idea making this post mikk0j.