The Dink Network

You are falling in the very trap which I (or, my quoted text) warned about. Don't mix "ease of use" with "ease of learning/figuring out". They aren't the same.

Sorry but when I said "ture" I mean "true". So in other words I agreed (partially). That typo has been corrected now.

Now to calrify the point I made before: I was NOT saying that they are the same. Quite the reverse. I was was simply saying that "ease of figuring out can affect ease of use". That is quite different to them being the same.

In MS Word; MS WordPad; or MS Notepad; all "user-friendly" Windows text editors, the quickest way to do this is:
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-Shift-Down
- Ctrl-X
- Ctrl-End
- Ctrl-V

Wrong. Cut and paste is the easiest way to do this in all of the quoted word processors/text editors (at least I assume cut and paste can be done in vi, otherwise it is useless).

(That's assuming you use the keyboard. Otherwise, you need some Click-and-Drag mouse operations and a reliable autoscroll.)[i]

Why use the keyboard when you cun just use the mouse to do Cut and paste tasks (or use the keyboard shortcuts and the mouse).

[i]Just so long as you know how to use it. If you don't know "d5d" means "Place five lines of text in the buffer, and delete them from the document" then you're going to struggle to make vi work. But if you DO know, then you're going to fly along.

So when some newbie sees how fast and easily an experienced vi user can do stuff, he readily agrees that vi is superior to Word for text editing. Then he tries to use it himself. He starts it up, gets a screen full of ~s, and when he types, nothing appears on the screen.

He finds out about the text-entry and command modes, and starts trying to use vi with a limited knowledge of it's functions. He struggles, as there are so many things he has to learn before he can make vi work. Then he complains "vi would be much better if it was as easy to use as Word!"

Thsese points proves my point about how knowing (understanding) how to use it (thus ease of understanding) can affect ease of use. For if you don't know/understand what "d5d" means (which I didn't until you explained it) it's harder to use, thus also proving my point of 'subjective ease of use". As i stated their is no such thing is as objective ease of use. This is because it relies on people and people are subjective (hence the saying "everyone is an individual).

... can't be bothered to learn

Not neccessarily. Some people simply don't understand that sort of thing.

Also to me it sounds like vi is less intuitive, which is also a factor that affects ease of use (and yes I know they aren't the same thing).

Yeah. So keep your jargon and facts straight before you argue, please. You may say that "something that is easy to learn is easy to use", but I would disagree. This quoted text perfectly illustrates that this isn't always (and actually very rarely) the case.

I did have them correct. I never said that it's "always' the case. I said "sometimes". I even clearly stated that. Here is a couple of sentances that I said along those lines:

However, in cases like your example the two do not go together. It's just that in some cases they do.

So in other words you are the one that should be getting your facts straight not me, since you ignored part of what i said, despite it being an important and clarifying part of it. A part of it that actually agreed with you. In missing that you were arguing with only part of my staement, a part of it that could not be left out if you wanted to be arguing with it and getting your facts straight. Also in missing it out you were not arguing with my whole point, only half ot it. But since a point is the whole thing, not half of it, you in fact argued against something I did not in fact say.

In short: do not criticise someone for doing something when it was in fact you who done it, not the person you critised.