Yeah, I've known and used "vi" for a couple of decades, saw someone use visual mode in a video a few months ago, and it blew my mind.
I still don't know how to do project navigation in vi, as I mainly use it for editing config files. I used emacs back in the day, but vscode is what I'm currently most comfortable with for moving between files in a large, deeply nested project.
Use fzf for file navigation and perhaps vim-vinegar. When you open Vim, use :cd to change to your project directory and you’re ready. Use :term to start stuff, e.g., a local web server or whatever. Use fzf to navigate between open buffers.
I still don't know how to do project navigation in vi, as I mainly use it for editing config files. I used emacs back in the day, but vscode is what I'm currently most comfortable with for moving between files in a large, deeply nested project.