As someone who always used graphical text editors with discoverable interfaces, for a long time I found both vi and emacs to be like black boxes covered in unlabeled fiddly knobs — except turning vi's knobs in the wrong order would make some of the other knobs start spinning wildly. Just trying to get either of them to use a color scheme that didn't hurt my eyes was an exercise in frustration. I can use either passably nowadays and do use both fairly frequently, but I have to admit I still find don't find either particularly nice to use. I feel like whatever is great about them is always hidden somewhere just out of sight.