A love for traditional and moditional knives!

[Mandrake50]

@paskapotkuri
Yeah, I just posted that in a different thread where they are having a similar discussion, Might be worth a read.

In my experience, the Chinese do it better!

The general rule is what @Valynor stated. The super steels that people love are generally harder to sharpen because of the higher percentage of the harder carbides in them. This is not directly tied to hardness. There is another parameter called machineability that is more closely tied to ease of sharpening. So you really need to look at the properties of the steel in total to figure it out. There are some steels that harden to ,say, 61, that can be easier to sharpen than those at 59. There a…

. If you can get through it (it is quite long) you will have the info you need to make a good decision. Unfortunately there is no simple answer. It is all about tradeoffs.
Buck used to use something called 440HC and they had the heat treatment down to s science. Maybe not the best for anything, but very good for most things. If they still use it, it is still a good choice. 154CM is an oldy, but still good. Sandvik 12c27 is another good mid range steel. Stepping up you might try something in S30V. A good steel, but a bit harder to sharpen.
So read the article, do some research, and you will come up with something that fits your needs.