A couple of decades ago, a couple of us wrote a word processor. We thought a lot about the issues of novices and usability and came to the conclusion that users are novices for only a short time and spend most of their time as intermediates. True power users are few. So basic operations should be intuitive even if not strictly consistent. Everything else should be easily discoverable. Really esoteric things could be left to the manual, but still discoverable.

A novice friendly interface should not impede an experienced user, and there should not be experience based modes. You don't see much of these days. MS Word is an example of a crappy interface. Some non-esoteric functions are hidden away in non-discoverable corners and it does magical things as a default. Eclipse is another program with a crappy interface, because of different modes and views. I have finally accommodated my self because it eases the intense pain of Java programming, but on the whole I would rather use UltraEdit.

Of course none of this applies to emacs users. They are are a secret society unto, themselves, kind of like the Masons.