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> vim is intuitive ( -ish?) once you understand what each character means That is a much different statement than simply saying "vim is intuitive", which is th
by joemi 10y ago
> vim is intuitive ( -ish?) once you understand what each character means
That is a much different statement than simply saying "vim is intuitive", which is the statement it appears you're arguing against. I doubt there's anyone in the world who would attempt to make such a bold claim as that.
I've found the "vim is intuitive once you understand what each character means" claim to be pretty accurate. Before learning what the keys did, it seemed like a laughably impossible-to-use program, but after learning what the keys do, it feels very natural and composable. Sure, some of that is due to muscle memory, like hjkl for movement, but a lot of that are things like "p for paste", "d for delete", "n for next", and so on. Those, to me, seem like very intuitive mappings.
- boomlinde 10y agoThat it can be "intuitive once you understand what each character means" seems a bit oxymoronic to me. A design is intuitive or it isn't. That you can figure out a complex and cluttered design and use it to your advantage over time by trawling through manuals and guides doesn't make it intuitive. Your intuitive understanding of the design may improve, but that applies even to the most brain breaking concepts, so it's hardly a useful way to look at it.
- naibafo 10y agoWell, some basic commands would be intuitive but aren't anymore, because most applications use very different keys or because our vocabulary changed. I.e. y(ank) and p(aste). However, once you know them they do make more sense then ctrl-v for paste (was that chosen because v is next to c on the keyboard?). What I think becomes really intuitive once you understand the basic commands however is the combination of them. If you know that 'dd' deletes a line, it is very intuitive to me that '4dd' deletes 4 lines.
- joemi 10y agoOthers have explained it better in threads near this one than I could, but the short response to this is that intuitiveness is personal and contextual.
- boomlinde 10y agoSure, it's personal to some extent, but have you ever seen anyone sit down with a Vi/Ex/Ed-like for the first time and intuitively figured out how to work it? It's also contextual for sure, but for the word to be meaningful at all in a UI design sense, one surely must draw the line somewhere before the required context is to know the editor from experience or by having studied its documentation. Otherwise it's an absolutely useless thing to point out for the sake of discussion. Anyone can use complex things intuitively given some exercise. That doesn't make things like theoretical physics particularly intuitive in themselves.
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