Probably the best example I have of learning a feature by accident is macro recording. Occasionally I used to hit the q key when I was meaning to hit w to navigate by word. After a few months of wondering what "recording" meant, I looked it up and it has become one of the most important components of my workflow ever since.
However, I would argue that for the vast majority of Vim features, learning "by accident" is unfeasible. Many commands give no visual or verbal indication of what happened (consider marks). Further, both the tutorial and the Vim wiki are very readable and can cover a lot more ground than by hoping to accidentally hit a goldmine feature while mashing random key combinations.
However, I would argue that for the vast majority of Vim features, learning "by accident" is unfeasible. Many commands give no visual or verbal indication of what happened (consider marks). Further, both the tutorial and the Vim wiki are very readable and can cover a lot more ground than by hoping to accidentally hit a goldmine feature while mashing random key combinations.