I'm sorry, but although I'd agree vim is awesome, there's no way I would call its commands "intuitive." Take 'y', for 'yank.' Would anyone really argue that the word "yank" is a natural way of expressing "copy?" "Yeah mom, just yank and paste that into an e-mail... " And there's nothing inherently intuitive about '/' for searching, unless you're already familiar with unix commands like sed. Or ":" for go to line. Or "x" for delete letter. Or "jkl;" for movement, for that matter. Etc... etc... etc...
A lot of people here have made the point that vim has a steep learning curve that eventually pays off, which, to me implies that intuitiveness is either lacking or besides the point. Still, I agree with your other points. I'm thinking of going back to it to minimize hand strain.
It's not that individual commands are intuitive. Yes, you need to learn the verb for copying is y (and is called yank), the verb for deleting is d. The "intuitive" part comes once you have a basic vocabulary. You can then learn a new action and already "intuitively" know advanced ways to use it.
If I learn the new verb c, which deletes and puts me in insert mode, I already know that I can type c3w to change 3 words, or ci" to change the phrase inside quotation marks.
Because all verbs work on the same set of nouns and adjectives I can intuitively know what many commands do - even though I've never tried them - as long as I understand the parts that make up the command.
I agree that there are some trade-off, but other editors have their trade-offs as well. IMO, Vim's trade-offs are acceptable. Actually, / for search is traditional beyond Unix: Opera and Firefox understand it. And ? (which is Shift + /) searches in the opposite direction (a smart trade-off). x, while not literal, is descriptive: think about drawing an x over a character to "delete" it. hjkl, while not mnemonic, are so often used that that it is advantageous having them there and muscle memory develops fast. Goto line is also <line number>G, more mnemonic.
I think the steep learning curve comes from the need to learn a richer and more precise way of editing, while you may be used to get by with a sloppy one. I had a similar experience when I switched to the Dvorak keyboard: I learned for the first time how to touch-type, while the Qwerty grew on me from hunt-and-peck.
Since you are considering about going back, here are some useful custom mappings of mine:
- swap p and P;
- map Space as PageDown;
- map Shift + Space as PageUp;
The last two mirror the way most document-displaying applications work. Generally, don't think twice about remapping some commands either to correct historical quirks of Vim or make it behave consistently with other applications you may be using, hence lowering your memory load.
A lot of people here have made the point that vim has a steep learning curve that eventually pays off, which, to me implies that intuitiveness is either lacking or besides the point. Still, I agree with your other points. I'm thinking of going back to it to minimize hand strain.