Ok let me be very honest here, let's look at both editors learning curves
- vi/vim
You need to learn to open a file, edit it, move around and exit and the edit/view mode. Everybody learns how to do it. At first it sucks but you can learn this in 5 min.
Nothing too hard, and yes, do use the direction keys, it's not the 70s anymore.
From there you can learn other things
- Emacs
You try reading anything about it, there's something about Meta key (and apparently nobody can say what the actual meta key is without some wrangling from them because who knows if you're not coding on a Sun Sparc from the 90s so they don't want to compromise).
Then something about a "prefix command" C-x (what is C? Control? Which other program uses C as an abbreviation for that?) Buffers. What's a buffer?
I tried opening the help of both programs, VIM shows exactly what I mentioned there. Move around, close this window, etc
Emacs? I'll copy-paste here (key bindings help)
> C-x Prefix Command
> \200 .. ÿ encoded-kbd-self-insert-ccl
> C-x 8 iso-transl-ctl-x-8-map
Why the F is this relevant or useful?
Then I try to quit and it's a bit of a wrangle until it gets Ctrl-C Ctrl-X right (or the other way)
Everything seems like it's actively fighting the user, and making it more difficult or convoluted than it should.
Usability problems are never the fault of the user.
- vi/vim
You need to learn to open a file, edit it, move around and exit and the edit/view mode. Everybody learns how to do it. At first it sucks but you can learn this in 5 min.
Nothing too hard, and yes, do use the direction keys, it's not the 70s anymore.
From there you can learn other things
- Emacs
You try reading anything about it, there's something about Meta key (and apparently nobody can say what the actual meta key is without some wrangling from them because who knows if you're not coding on a Sun Sparc from the 90s so they don't want to compromise).
Then something about a "prefix command" C-x (what is C? Control? Which other program uses C as an abbreviation for that?) Buffers. What's a buffer?
I tried opening the help of both programs, VIM shows exactly what I mentioned there. Move around, close this window, etc
Emacs? I'll copy-paste here (key bindings help)
> C-x Prefix Command
> \200 .. ÿ encoded-kbd-self-insert-ccl
> C-x 8 iso-transl-ctl-x-8-map
Why the F is this relevant or useful?
Then I try to quit and it's a bit of a wrangle until it gets Ctrl-C Ctrl-X right (or the other way)
Everything seems like it's actively fighting the user, and making it more difficult or convoluted than it should.
Usability problems are never the fault of the user.