[DigitalJack]

I agree with saying no. Vim and Emacs will "click" for you when you want to learn them. Wanting to learn them is different than wanting to have learned them. It's the difference between wanting to write a novel and wanting to have written a novel.

Personally I would nominate emacs using spacemacs[0], but I knew both already going in. I have a hard time understanding what people find hard about Vim, but I've used it for 7 years now (well, spacemacs now), so I probably just don't remember what was hard.

I think it wasn't so bad for me because I didn't try to learn much about it. I learned how to move, (just the hjkl part), and basic selection. Anything else was learned "just in time."

For example, even after having used vim for 7 years, I never knew about the "ib" selector. Never needed it, and doing that sort of selection has never been painful enough to me that I went searching for a "better way."

While things like vim-tutor or vim-golf or whatever they have now might work for some people, that would have killed it for me. Learning for the sake of learning will get you part of the way there, but learning out of a personal need is what leads toward "mastery." And I define mastery in a restricted sense of being able to do what you want, fluently.

[0] http://spacemacs.org/

[hashhar]

Exactly. The only thing needed to configure when starting out is disabling of arrow keys and low keyboard repeat rate so that you don't do wrong things like holding down keys (arrow keys, delete, backspace etc.). Holding down keys is a Vim anti-pattern.

[1]: https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/vim-anti-patterns/

[CJefferson]

Spacemacs might be great for existing Emacs and vim users, but it is horrible for beginners of both (in my experience), as you can't follow Emacs tutorials, can't follow vim ones, and there just aren't many spacemacs tutorials yet, and several I found were out of date.