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Quick reply to address your issues:

- the binding menu idle time is configurable with the variable `dotspacemacs-which-key-delay`, check the docstring.

- The key binding you missed (should be listed in the quick start guide) is `SPC h SPC` which is used to find various info like FAQ, layers, packages config, dotfile variables etc... try it for yourself: `SPC h SPC which-key` and choose `dotspacemacs-which-key-delay` then RET, you can now modify its default value of 0.4sec to 0.

- `SPC :` to access _all_ interactive commands of Emacs (`SPC SPC` in develop, shortcut configurable of course).

- to discover how to close a window just press `SPC` then look for `window` and so on, it takes 10 seconds to discover it ;-)

- If you were not familiar with Vim you can choose to opt for Emacs key bindings and `SPC` becomes `ALT-m`, everything else is the same. But you are familiar with Vim so I don't see what issue you want to raise.

Thank you for trying Spacemacs :-)

Thanks for the detailed reply, very helpful :)

I wasn't trying to raise an issue at all, merely state that Spacemacs isn't as obvious to a new user as Atom - but I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, obviously (Spac)emacs has a lot more power under the hood potentially and I am sure is worth the additional effort to learn.

I have to say I'm impressed with what a good job you have done of making it user friendly :)

>I have no idea how to close an open file without Googling whereas in Sublime or Atom it's either click the "X" or use the standard Cmd-W shortcut.

You can just use the menu bar for that.

>I also have no idea how to open a project or search for a file, and don't really know where to start discovering those things, whereas in both Sublime and Atom you can browse through the menus, or hopefully quickly discover the Cmd-P command launcher which lets you type a command.

You can, as it tells you, use the fuzzy command search by typing M-x. Same as Atom, just a different command.

Honestly, and sorry for sounding rude, to me it just seems like you intentionally tried to not understand in order to prove a point; Just because in your mind you have this idea of emacs just having to be inferior in some way.

As it stands though, it's not.

> Honestly, and sorry for sounding rude, to me it just seems like you intentionally tried to not understand in order to prove a point; Just because in your mind you have this idea of emacs just having to be inferior in some way.

Not at all and I didn't mean it to come across in that way, apologies if it did. Thanks for pointing out those things - I actually for some reason didn't think of using the menu bar at all, I guess because it looks like a non-GUI app. That's my fault anyway!

I was just interested in the "absolute newcomer" user experience, as that is how a lot of people will judge things, which for me after a few minutes was "I can't work out how to do what I need to do" and so I stopped. I'm sure that with an hour or so playing around, I would get used to it, and I intend to!

A text editor is a tool. I don't think accessibility matters that much - it's something that can and should be sacrificed for improved efficiency of working with said tool. You spend 5 minutes Googling up (oh, omg, reading the built-in manual or running the tutorial that happens to be shown pretty much on startup) how to do some things and now you can do those things much more efficiently than by clicking around "discoverable" menus and toolbars.