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My biggest problem with vim is that I can get it configured with all of the plugins to emulate a GUI IDE, but it does nothing to help if I can't remember the shortcuts. Off by one character? Whoops, you activated the RootNuker Plugin on Buffer 3. Discoverability is terrible, one of the few things that I feel is actually faster with a mouse.

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There's no doubt, vim isn't big on making it easy to find your way around.

I don't think that matters so long as you're methodical in your approach to learning it. It's important to master the basics and then add new tools one at a time.

The amazing thing about vim is that each new command can be composed with your existing knowledge set, so just learning what, say, 's' does gives you a whole lot more power.

Also, while the discoverability might suck, the built in manual is just incredible.

This doesn't apply to plugins however, which constitute most of what would make Vim an IDE. Most of the core commands are pretty well thought out and I have a nice keyboard map printed out just in case.

Absolutely. That said, I think modern IDEs suffer from huge discoverability problems as well. The truth is, when you have thousands of features, discoverability had to give way to documentation.

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