I use a text editor for all of my hacking needs (vim but emacs is good times too). That being said I'm amazed the HN community has so much trouble understanding

I use a text editor for all of my hacking needs (vim but emacs is good times too). That being said I'm amazed the HN community has so much trouble understanding the usability. Do you feel similarly when you load up into the latest Rate My Startup: "Wow this interface is really just holding me back, I'm completely stifled by all these buttons all over the place.This interface should just be a blinking cursor" Of course you don't, feature discoverability is an important feature that designers strive for. When you're competent at programming and you really know your editor then you boot up and you know exactly which feature you want to use and the shortcut to do it, but it's almost impossible in vim/emacs to learn these features on the fly. In my opinion IDE's can be a great way to learn to program particularly one's designed with a particular language in mind. The best example of this I've seen is DrScheme which is lightweight, intuitive and (believe it or not) does by and large stay out of your way.