Yeah, I don't have those people in any meaningful capacity. If I did then hg would immediately be a strong contender.
With regards to the philosophical difference, I see where you're coming from. This is the reason I use OS X instead of Linux for instance, it's more important for me to have a simple and usable GUI than to have ultimate control and flexibility. With text editors and version control systems I don't feel that way though. As a matter of fact, I do use vim, and I don't think it's ridiculous in the least to use tools that require "grokking" for one's core competency. I'm not saying everyone should use these tools, but I do believe in my heart that the power of vim can not be equalled by a more user-friendly text editor. Sure you can have a more powerful IDE for language X or Y, but I doubt any of those will be able to stick around and grow with me over the dozens of languages I will use over the course of my career. Since I plan to use these tools for decades (unlike programming languages themselves), the importance of newbie-friendliness approaches zero. That's not to say the UI doesn't matter, but just that the factors that matter are the ones that are applicable to the master rather than the apprentice.
I never said "newbie-friendliness," though I can see how that might have been implied by my last post. I said "user-friendliness", which I think also lends itself to easier uptake from novices. Sorry for the confusion.
I know vim quite well. I still consider it onerous and unpleasant to use, and I find claims of its "power" to be overstated; I have noted before and still think to be true that editing text isn't the hard part of my job. I am definitely suspicious of claims that "it'll still be there in ten years" to be hugely important; my editor might change in ten years, but Cmd-X will still be cut and Cmd-V will still be paste, you know what I mean? The specifics of exactly what text editor I use matter so much less to me than "does it not make me hate using it?".
All of that is an aside, however, and tangential to what I was saying: for me, the visceral reaction to both vim and git is not a pleasant one; I find them to be designed for people whose mental model with regards to computer interaction is alien to mine, and despite being capable with both I find such tools uncomfortable to use. I don't consider either user-friendly (and, I think, to most people), and while I don't begrudge those who prefer those tools, life is simply too short to spend my time squeezing blood out of that particular stone.
With regards to the philosophical difference, I see where you're coming from. This is the reason I use OS X instead of Linux for instance, it's more important for me to have a simple and usable GUI than to have ultimate control and flexibility. With text editors and version control systems I don't feel that way though. As a matter of fact, I do use vim, and I don't think it's ridiculous in the least to use tools that require "grokking" for one's core competency. I'm not saying everyone should use these tools, but I do believe in my heart that the power of vim can not be equalled by a more user-friendly text editor. Sure you can have a more powerful IDE for language X or Y, but I doubt any of those will be able to stick around and grow with me over the dozens of languages I will use over the course of my career. Since I plan to use these tools for decades (unlike programming languages themselves), the importance of newbie-friendliness approaches zero. That's not to say the UI doesn't matter, but just that the factors that matter are the ones that are applicable to the master rather than the apprentice.