got a link to this decision?
As a computer programmer of thirty-five-plus years’ experience … (koff, koff) … I will gladly go “on record” in saying that the overall accomplishment of “the total(!) UI makeover of Blender” is one of the most astonishing, and the most astonishingly brilliant, feats that I have ever witnessed.
Ever.
Period.
“You freakin’ blew me away,” and BTW that is not an easy thing to do.
“Yes, you can take that to the bank and cash it … and, please do.” My hat is off to you … to every single one of you … and I do intend to now be giving you my very highest praise, reserved to very few.
“Well Done.”
“You are [all …] ‘Hackers Extraordinare.’” (And I know that you know what I mean by ‘Hacker.’) 
Split area sure took a while to get used to. Now I love it, and really a very innovative way of handling a non-modal UI.
Sorry about the “direct comparison” comment, meant it more as harmless fun - and expressing some frustration. I’m still a bit new around here.
I don’t know what kind of mind thought 3D cursor was a good UI solution and I’m not sure I want to know.
Some of these have already been mentioned, but:
- 3D cursor is one of the best tools in Blender together with selection to cursor command;
- split areas with possibility to change the type of the area as one wishes:
- help popup of menu items showing the associated python command;
The most idiot thing: right click select by default. Can’t see no benefit at all except confusion. One clicks better/faster with non-index finger? One uses selection less often than setting 3D cursor to arbitrary location by clicking?
Some fun ones that haven’t been mentioned yet…
- Double keypress hotkeys (A, G, R… I still miss pressing B > B for circle select… formerly brush select)
- Moveable/hideable/scrollable headers
- Pose mode
- Datablocks
- Python in tooltips
- Zoomable 2D interface
- L/R suffix naming convention for rigging
- Hover copy/paste (numeric values and colors)
- Combined slide/increment/key-entry numerical widgets
I wish there was a way to scroll the 3d cursor parallel to the view, i.e. if you press Control while Scrolling, it would push the 3D cursor back in space.
Is there any way to do this already?
I don’t have a lot of experience with 3D apps other than Blender, so some of these might not be truly unconventional:
- Split Windows (still does this better than anything else I’ve used)
- Being able to assign background/ref images to the viewport is more convenient than planes/empties
- Math input (a few other applications have this, but usually it only does basic things)
- 3D Cursor is handy, but I also think it has a lot of room for improvement; it is ridiculously clumsy.
- Being able to right click the UI and edit the Python Source in the text editor window (too bad setting hotkeys isn’t that easy).
+1 to the non-overlapping editor paradigm, too many 3D Modelling programs rely on floating windows that end up blocking other content.
A few that haven’t been mentioned
- Some of the core shortcuts, (X, G, R, S, Tab, etc) are used across editors, meaning when you’ve learned the shortcuts for one panel, a good deal of them also apply to the rest, and I hope this gets extended further where appropriate.
- Spacebar Menu over right-click menus, which lets you find a specific operator rather than having a right-click menu try to second-guess you, as well as see the key shortcut for it, if it exists.
- Click-Drag for checkboxes and on/off switches in the UI, for example dragging across the outliner visibility icon to very quickly hide or prevent the render of many objects without having to click the switches individually.
- The ability to make the Toolbar/Properties panels translucent in several editors.
Having cursor and select on different mouse buttons is awesome. I miss it in other software.
To anyone who’s never tried out LMB select/RMB cursor - give it a try! You may be surprised how little difference it actually makes.
I wish to see autoresolving conflicts in Inputs while adding a new custom hotkey for a tool. Its so nasty to do this manualy each time you want to add a new hotkey and in 99% of the time its allready in use by some other stuff.
3D cursor is a good thing, once you learn how to use it. Until you learn the shift-s menu it’s pointless. Once you realise it’s there, and you can manipulate the cursor to manipulate placement of anything, it becomes a godsend. Nevertheless, it took me months to find it. It’s a good job I’m a stubborn git.