Easy to Use

I've noticed that when choosing a tool for software development one of the criteria that's often proposed is the tool should be "easy to use". While I agree that ease of use should be a criteria for choosing a tool I've come to realize that I have a different opinion on what "easy to use" means than others. When I say a tool is "easy to use" I mean it literally. A tool that is easy to use should make it really easy for me to do what I want. Here are some of the development tools that I use that I consider easy to use:

1. vim
2. git
3. The command line (bash)

All three of these tools let me do my job as quickly and painlessly as possible.  If you asked others for a list of similar tools that are easy to use you may get the following:

1. notepad
2. svn
3. GUI's

By my definition the above tools are not easier to use than my list (they don't allow me to do my job as quickly or painlessly) but they are easier to learn.  I'm not sure if easy to learn and easy to use must be mutually exclusive but I can't think of any tools that I use frequently that have both qualities.  There is nothing wrong with choosing a tool that's easier to learn over one that's easier to use as long as you use the tool infrequently.  Investing years to fully learn vim is a waste of time if you only edit text files for a few minutes every month.  If your going to use a tool frequently over a long period of time then you should spend the time to learn the tool that's easy to use even if it isn't easy to learn.