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> Look at SublimeText, it's got 1% of the features of Vim, yet it's converting Vim users left and right, by its sheer usability.

You're confounding usability with "do not need a manual". They're not the same thing at all. Moreover, I reject entirely your assertion that vim is not usable.

vim is amazingly usable; text manipulation commands for example all follow a common structure: [action][times][position]. That means the rules you learn for using "yank" apply just as well to "delete" or "paste" or whatever. Anytime you encounter a new text command you don't even need to wonder how to use it; it's a sure thing it will follow the same structure that you already know.

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>You're confounding usability with "do not need a manual". They're not the same thing at all. Moreover, I reject entirely your assertion that vim is not usable.

If by usable we mean "one can be productive in it" then yes that's correct, vim is immensely usable and I've been using it in that sense for six years.

That however is a facile definition of what most people typically mean when we speak of 'usability'.

A tool can be useful while only being barely usable at all. You can do wonderful things with modern airplanes, but most models require painstaking attention and study.

I'm personally of the opinion that we can have a terse input command language while also exposing the rest of the functionality in a way that doesn't punish all users.

I spent all of university using vim purely as a way to indent and colour my code; but intelligently using splits, buffers, tabs, code folding, ctags etc should not require luck to discover and exacting patience to use.

Let's not even get started on the totally inscrutable vimscript. How many more useful things could we have if I didn't have to depend on @tpope for 90% of my plugins?

For many years vim trudged along because it the only other game in town beyond emacs. Now, I only continue to use it because of sunk costs.

So yeah, nerds have to get over their sacred knowledge. Just because you somehow enjoyed reading the :help pages (which… require you to know how to use vim to read!) doesn't mean we have to force everyone to do that.

Or we could all move to Sublime.

> If by usable we mean "one can be productive in it" then yes that's correct, vim is immensely usable and I've been using it in that sense for six years.

Usable means an interface which is (i) consistent and (ii) well suited to the task at hand. It does not mean you should not require any training nor that you should be able to intuit the functionality without looking at the manual.

vim is an example of software that is both highly usable and intended for use by advanced users.

> I spent all of university using vim purely as a way to indent and colour my code; but intelligently using splits, buffers, tabs, code folding, ctags etc should not require luck to discover and exacting patience to use.

You're doing it wrong. Read the bloody manual.

> Usable means an interface which is (i) consistent and (ii) well suited to the task at hand.

No it doesn't. Usable as in Usability is defined in the ISO-norm 9241-110 by seven principles, a summary can be found here: http://www.userfocus.co.uk/resources/iso9241/part110.html

"suitability for the task (the dialogue should be suitable for the user’s task and skill level); self-descriptiveness (the dialogue should make it clear what the user should do next); controllability (the user should be able to control the pace and sequence of the interaction); conformity with user expectations (it should be consistent); error tolerance (the dialogue should be forgiving); suitability for individualisation (the dialogue should be able to be customised to suit the user); and suitability for learning (the dialogue should support learning)."

vim falls short in discoverabilty and, arguably, in user expectation, and suitability for learning.

Though I don't want to further spawn a vim-discussion. Just to show you that you don't seem to know the necessary vocabulary to tell you parent that he is wrong.

> You're doing it wrong. Read the bloody manual.

Yeah. Way to prove his point.

> vim falls short in discoverabilty and, arguably, in user expectation, and suitability for learning.

vim fits very well all the criteria you just cited. Moreover, "discoverability", "user expectation" and "suitability for learning" appear to be buzzwords that you just threw in on your own at the end.

Nope, they all are part of the ISO. I cited two of them, and the first, discoverability, is a consequence of self-descriptiveness and learnability. Don't know how you get the idea I throw them in as buzzword when they are part of the quote...

They are very really things and relatively well understood. By calling them "buzzwords" that were just randomly "thrown in" you don't really make a good case for your understanding of usability.

You have to admit, compared to most any tool out there, vim has one of the worst newbie experiences, given its popularity.

Even a terminal window allows you to type help to get something to work with. VIM replies with "Left, end of word, Right, paste after" which in most cases is nearly a NOP.

I believe what he is trying to say is that it would make sense to figure out how to make the initial experience less daunting without giving up the power it provides.

The first thing that shows up in a VIM session is a small introductory text that includes

    type   :help<Enter>  or   <F1>  for on-line help

And of course the GUI also has the familiar Help menu as most common GUI apps.

Oh, yes, because showing the help entries first when entering the application clearly is the right idea.

And surely that is why all the text-entering applications in the world have followed vi's lead.

not too mention that vim became hip only in the last couple of years.

saying it's converting vim users left and right is a little far fetched. most of those users never had any real vim muscle memory to begin with. a lot of "vim" users i saw work just fine without motion commands. the only reason they used it was because they could use it anywhere. whether it's modal or not is totally irrelevant to them.

> not too mention that vim became hip only in the last couple of years.

Wait, what? Vim has been in use for a lot longer than that (it was released in 1991), and vi even longer (1976).

"Hip" does not mean remotely the same thing as "in use".

Yes but emacs was for more popular than vim for awhile.

No, you're changing the meaning of usability. It doesn't mean it can be used, but it means that it's easy to learn and use. And vim is powerful but it's not a good example of usability.

> No, you're changing the meaning of usability. It doesn't mean it can be used, but it means that it's easy to learn and use. And vim is powerful but it's not a good example of usability.

"Easy to learn and use" does not mean "I don't have to learn anything". In particular, vim is easy once you learn something about how it works with text. For example: "d" is used to delete text. It is used as part of a command sequence that usually goes:

[action][times][position]

One of the first things you learn for example is that "dw" deletes to the end of the current word. d5w deletes to the end of the next 5 words. "yw" copies to the end of the current word. "y5w" copies 5 words.

Later you might learn about cursor movemen. You find out that "j" for example moves the cursor down one line. Guess what? These cursor re-positioning commands fit into the command structure you've already learned. So you can easily intuit that "d5j" will kill everything to the end of the next 5 lines.

Later in your vim journey you might learn that "D" is shorthand for delete to the end of the current line. Hmm, but there is also this "y" command that yanks text. Guess what? "Y" yanks to the end of the line!

That's what usability looks like. You take what you've learned and apply it in a new context in order to produce expected and consistent results.

In short: vim is amazing. It's consistent, intuitive and immensely usable -- but only after you invest some time learning how to use it. The only time vim is not intuitive is when your expectations are that it will behave somewhat like TextEdit or Notepad or whatever other lesser text manipulation tools are out there.

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